What if Dumbledore Was Reborn With All His Memories And Abilities?
What if Dumbledore Was Reborn With All His Memories And Abilities?
Discord: / discord
Voice Acting & Narration: Steven Waters @bobablackfly602
Writing: Myself, @khuz377 , @viktoriafilbert
The sensation of falling. And then, silence. A silence so total and so complete that it seems to press against him from every direction, as though the universe itself is holding its breath.
And then he opens his eyes.
The world is a blur of colour and warmth. His body is impossibly small. His fingers curl without his permission. His lungs draw breath in short, ragged gasps that he has no ability to control. He is an infant, cradled in arms he recognises by instinct before memory can supply the name.
Kendra Dumbledore holds her firstborn son against her chest, her heartbeat steady and strong, and Albus Dumbledore, who once commanded the loyalty of armies and the respect of nations, who duelled the darkest wizards of two generations and shaped the fate of the magical world for over a century, can do absolutely nothing except cry.
The first year is agony of a kind he has never known. His mind is a cathedral trapped inside a thimble. Thoughts arrive fully formed, layered and complex, and then shatter against the limitations of an infant brain that simply lacks the architecture to hold them. He forgets things he knew seconds ago. He reaches for memories and finds them dissolving like smoke. He tries to speak and produces only garbled sounds that frustrate him beyond measure.
But Dumbledore has always been patient. He has waited decades for plans to bear fruit. He can wait for his own brain to catch up with his soul.
By age two, the fog begins to lift. Not all at once, but in patches. He remembers Hogwarts. He remembers the Elder Wand. He remembers a boy named Tom Riddle and the horror that boy became. These memories return like islands emerging from a receding tide, disconnected at first, then gradually forming a map.
By three, the map is nearly complete. He lies in his crib at night, staring at a ceiling he remembers from a lifetime ago, and he plans.
By four, Albus Dumbledore is fully himself again. And the first thing he decides, with the absolute clarity of a man who has already lived through every mistake he is about to make, is that this time, he will save Ariana.
He knows the date. He knows the hour. He knows precisely how it happens, because the memory of his sister's broken mind has haunted him across two lifetimes. Three Muggle boys. A garden. Ariana performing accidental magic, something small and beautiful, a flower lifting into the air or a stone floating between her palms. The boys see it. They are frightened. Fear becomes cruelty, as it so often does with children, and the cruelty shatters something inside Ariana that can never be fully repaired.
Except that this time, Albus is ready.
He is six years old. He has spent two years practising wandless magic in secret, tiny manipulations that cost him enormous effort but produce reliable results. He can nudge objects. He can create small flickers of light. He can make a coin vanish from one hand and appear in the other. These are parlour tricks by any adult wizard's standard. For what he needs today, they are more than sufficient.
The afternoon is warm. Ariana is in the garden, laughing, her hands outstretched as a small stone lifts from the grass and hovers in front of her face. Her eyes are wide with delight. She has no idea what she is doing. She has no idea that three boys are watching from the fence, their expressions shifting from curiosity to unease.
Albus is already moving.
He steps between Ariana and the fence, positioning his body so that her floating stone is partially blocked from view. The boys are climbing over. The tallest one points.
Boy(suspicious): What's she doing? What's wrong with her?
The fear is already forming in their eyes. Albus recognises it. In another life, this fear became violence.
Albus(cheerful): Oh, brilliant, you saw that? We've been practising all morning. Watch this.
He reaches behind the tallest boy's ear and produces a small pebble, palmed earlier for exactly this purpose. The boy flinches, then stares.
Albus(grinning): Stage magic. Our mum's been teaching us. Ariana's getting really good at the levitation trick. It's all about the thread, see?
He holds up a length of cotton he has kept in his pocket for three weeks, waiting for this exact moment. He loops it around a small stone and lifts it with exaggerated showmanship, tilting his hand so the thread catches the sunlight.