Albus Dumbledore had a peculiar gift for stillness.
It was not the silence of a man doing nothing, but the stillness of one whose thoughts moved too fast to be seen.
That evening, long after the laughter of the Christmas feast had faded and the castle had dozed into its soft winter dreams, he sat alone in his office with a mug of something steaming and sharp and entirely too strong for anyone under a century.
The office smelled faintly of beeswax and parchment — and of the faint ozone hum of the castle's magic.
Outside, the snow thickened against the high windows.
Fawkes shifted on his perch and sang one small, questioning note.
"I'm thinking, my friend," Dumbledore murmured. "Always a dangerous pastime."
He adjusted his spectacles and looked down at the silver Pensieve gleaming faintly on his desk. Inside it swirled thin threads of memory: moments collected over the past few months, fragments of a boy's voice, expressions, spells, laughter.
Harry Potter.
The child fascinated him. Not in the way prodigies or heroes did — Dumbledore had seen too many of those and too many graves that followed — but because Harry's magic felt old. Not powerful, exactly, but experienced. It resonated differently, as if each spell carried the faint echo of a lesson already learned once before.
He watched, in one of the stored memories, the eleven-year-old Harry quietly repairing a broken quill without saying a word, the spell forming itself through will alone.
Not accidental magic — intentional.
Not untrained — simply unspoken.
"Curious," Dumbledore whispered. "He learns as though remembering."
⸻
He had begun noticing it earlier in the term.
In Charms, Harry's wand flicks had been too precise for a beginner.
In Transfiguration, he'd grasped the nature of magical transformation not by memorizing incantations, but by intuition — feeling the way substance wanted to change.
In Defence, he had a duelist's rhythm — not talent, but composure.
He moved like someone who already knew what fear cost.
And then there were the small things:
The way Harry paused before answering questions about his parents.
The way he seemed to already know that Flamel's name meant something more than a historical footnote.
The way he had looked at the Mirror of Erised — not just with longing, but with recognition.
Most eleven-year-olds, when shown their hearts' desire, reached for it.
Harry had stepped back.
That was not the reflex of a child. That was the reflex of someone who had already learned that wishes were double-edged things.
Dumbledore leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers.
"Not a normal boy, Fawkes," he said softly. "And yet, perhaps more normal than most who pretend to be."
The phoenix blinked slowly, unimpressed.
⸻
Over the weeks that followed, Dumbledore began a quiet study.
He asked no direct questions — experience had taught him that truth offered freely was stronger than truth forced — but he watched.
When Harry spoke to friends, he measured his tone carefully, as if editing himself.
When he looked at the stars during Astronomy, his gaze wasn't wonder, but recognition.
And when danger brushed too close — during a broom accident, a duel, a brief flare of uncontrolled magic — Harry didn't flinch. He adjusted.
It was as though instinct had outrun childhood.
Dumbledore, who had lived long enough to see reincarnations, soul-bindings, and temporal fractures, began to piece together a suspicion so wild it almost embarrassed him to entertain it.
Could a soul remember itself?
Could a boy carry not just the scar of Voldemort's curse, but echoes of a life lived twice?
He dismissed it at first. The universe allowed many things, but it did not repeat them often.
And yet… the signs persisted.
A few nights after Christmas, he stood at the top of the Astronomy Tower watching snow drift over the dark Forbidden Forest, and he whispered to the wind,
"If not time, then memory. If not rebirth, then remembrance."
He thought of prophecies — of words that spoke of the child who would be the end of darkness.
Perhaps the prophecy had already ended once — and begun again.
⸻
Dumbledore's office, like all ancient rooms, had moods.
That evening it was alert, listening. The portraits of former headmasters shifted in their frames, murmuring in low tones.
Everard, always the skeptic, frowned. "You're thinking nonsense again, Albus. No one is born twice."
Armando Dippet sniffed. "He's always been sentimental about that boy."
Phineas Nigellus, lounging in his portrait with the smirk of a man who enjoyed argument for its own sake, interjected, "Oh, let him think what he likes. It's good for the old man to have mysteries."
Dumbledore ignored them all. "You did not see him with the Mirror," he said quietly. "He looked as though he were greeting ghosts who had never died."
The portraits fell silent.
He turned back to the Pensieve, dipping a long, thin finger into its surface. The memory that rose was bright and cold: Harry standing before the mirror, his reflection full of love and loss, but his eyes — calm. A boy who had made peace with pain that should have broken him.
"What are you, Harry Potter?" Dumbledore whispered. "A child… or an echo?"
Fawkes answered with a low, sympathetic trill.
⸻
By the time term resumed, Dumbledore had reached his own quiet verdict — not proof, but conviction.
Harry knew too much. But more than that — he understood too deeply for his age.
Not merely precocious. Not guided by another.
Something older than learning had taken root in him — the slow wisdom of someone who had already made mistakes, buried friends, and come to peace with both victory and loss.
He would not confront him — not yet. To name such a truth too soon would burden the boy before he was ready.
Instead, he would watch.
Guide subtly.
Nudge the world around Harry to test his choices — not his power, but his heart.
He took up his quill and wrote a line in his private journal — the one kept under the desk drawer locked by seven enchantments.
If he remembers another life, I will not strip it from him.
Let him be what he chooses to become this time.
The world has already asked enough of him once.
He looked out the window one last time that night.
The moonlight reflected off the snowy grounds, painting the towers in silver.
Somewhere down there, in the Gryffindor dormitory, Harry Potter slept soundly — dreaming, perhaps, of a future he had already lived.
And in the quiet, Dumbledore smiled, not in triumph but in sadness.
"Once, you were the boy who lived," he murmured.
"Now you are the boy who remembers. May that be enough."
Fawkes sang once — a low, pure note that trembled through the cold air — and the old wizard closed his eyes, letting thought and silence fold together like wings.
⸻
End of Interlude – "The Headmaster's Pondering Glass."