The Grand Azathoth Hotel - Chapter 12

Chapter 12

That night, Harry dreamed. But this was not a normal dream, not even the sort of vision-like connection he had sometimes shared with Voldemort. This dream was…strange. He was in King’s Cross Station—except it wasn’t. It was too luminous. The vast, arched ceiling stretched out endlessly above him, flickering between shapes, as if the space itself couldn’t quite decide what it was supposed to be. The walls curved where they shouldn’t, and the floor wasn’t solid—it looked like marble, but when he stepped forward, it rippled like water, his foot sinking half an inch before solidifying again. The tracks stretched into the distance but never seemed to end, vanishing into a haze of white that wasn’t mist but something else, something that resisted being looked at directly.

There was no sound. No trains. No hum of distant chatter. Just silence—vast and pressing, too loud in its absence.

And then—

“Harry.”

The voice was warm. Familiar. Laden with the same patient amusement that had always lived in it.

Dumbledore.

Harry turned sharply, and there he was, standing a few paces away, dressed in robes of deep purple, his half-moon spectacles glinting in the ethereal light. His long silver beard flowed like spun silk, and he had that same air of quiet wisdom he always carried in life.

“Professor…” Harry said, emotional.

Dumbledore smiled, stepping forward with a measured grace. “My dear boy.”

Harry swallowed, his gaze darting around the warped station. “Is this—?”

“A dream?” Dumbledore supplied gently. “Yes… and no.”

Harry frowned, his fingers flexing at his sides. “That’s not an answer.”

Dumbledore’s chuckle was light, but there was a weight behind it, something ancient, something that had seen too much. “Few things in life are ever so simple.”

Harry opened his mouth to press further, but a sound—wet, weak, wheezing—stopped him cold.

He turned his head—and froze.

There, beneath a rusted bench, was something.

It was small, twisted, shriveled like a dying thing not meant for this world. Its skin was raw and pink, as if it had been flayed open and never healed, its arms and legs thin, malformed, twitching feebly as it gasped for breath. Its cries were soft and pitiful, barely more than wet gurgles, and its red, raw eyes darted around in pain and fear.

And above it—watching—was a crow. Massive. Perched high on the iron beams, its black feathers gleamed with an unnatural darkness, absorbing the light around it rather than reflecting it. It did not move, did not make a sound. It simply watched, unblinking, its too-intelligent gaze flicking between Harry and the thing beneath the bench.

A deep, unsettling feeling stirred in Harry’s gut.

“What… is that?” he whispered, barely able to get the words out.

Dumbledore’s face darkened. “Something beyond saving.”

Harry shuddered. He knew what it was. What it had been.

“…Voldemort?”

Dumbledore let out a slow breath. And then, ever so slightly, he nodded.

Harry stared at the thing, bile rising in his throat.

And yet, the crow did not stop watching.

There was a pause. The silence thickened. And then, as if pulled by something unseen, Harry turned back to Dumbledore, his fingers tightening into fists.

“Professor,” he said suddenly. “I know this is a dream. Maybe this is stupid, or maybe—maybe the Snitch sent us to that hotel because you enchanted it so I could have this dream, or…”

He trailed off, because—

Dumbledore’s face had gone very still.

Not calm. Not serene. Not even unreadable in that way he sometimes was when withholding information. No—this was different. This was shock.

“What?” Dumbledore’s voice was quieter now, almost… apprehensive.

Harry hesitated. The tension in the air was palpable now, like the moment before a thunderclap.

“Well—yeah,” Harry said, shifting. “The Snitch. You left it to me. It led us somewhere. A hotel. Cozy place, actually. There’s this guy, James—he runs it. The Snitch went into this little key slot labeled—”

“WHAT DID YOU SAY?”

Dumbledore lunged forward so fast Harry barely had time to react.

His hands clamped onto Harry’s shoulders in a vice-like grip, his long fingers digging into the fabric of his robes. His blue eyes were wild, burning with a panic Harry had never seen before—not even in the moments before his death.

“Are you—” Dumbledore’s voice shook. “Are you currently in the Hotel?”

Harry blinked, his pulse spiking. “Y-Yeah?”

Dumbledore let go of him as if burned.

He staggered back, one hand coming up to run through his long beard, his breathing uneven. His entire body trembled, his mind racing behind his frantic gaze. He looked around wildly, as if trying to see beyond the dream itself, as if trying to see beyond Harry.

And then, under his breath, he whispered—“No. No, no, no.”

His fingers clenched, twisting into his beard, eyes flickering with thoughts moving too fast to catch. “This… ruins everything,” he murmured. “Everything I planned, everything I accounted for. I didn’t—I never—”

Harry stood frozen, watching the great Albus Dumbledore unravel before his eyes. The wise, unshakable figure who had guided him for years now looked small, fragile in a way Harry had never imagined possible. His fingers twitched at his sides, his mouth opened as if to speak, but no words came. His blue eyes, so often filled with unreadable wisdom, now burned with something much simpler—fear. And then, before Harry could begin to process what he was seeing, the silence shattered.

A voice, smooth and edged with something ancient, broke through the empty space. “Oh, you’re little Albus—the one who came—well, will come, since you were on the other timeline—with your little blond boyfriend.” The words drifted lazily, almost amused, but they carried a weight that made the air feel heavier.

Dumbledore stiffened as though struck, his face draining of color. He turned sharply, eyes wide, searching for the source. “You—” he stuttered, his usual poise utterly absent. His hands clenched, and for the first time in all of Harry’s encounters with him, he looked lost.

The crow turned its head toward Harry, appraising him with something that wasn’t curiosity, wasn’t malice—just inevitability. “There’s something of mine in the Snitch,” it said, voice calm, patient, certain. “And when James opened the door of that café, it must have been drawn to me.” A pause. “And… you have my cloak, too.”

Harry’s grip instinctively tightened around the invisibility cloak still folded in his hands. He wasn’t sure he understood, but his skin prickled, an intuition far older than logic warning him that this meant something. Something vast. Something terrifying. Dumbledore inhaled sharply, straightening, as though about to intervene. But before he could so much as form a sentence, his body unraveled. The air around him shimmered, his form peeling away like smoke caught in the wind, dissipating in curls of light. His eyes, still locked on the crow, held an expression that would haunt Harry long after waking—regret.

Harry’s breath caught. The space where Dumbledore had stood was empty. The world tilted, a sense of wrongness pressing against his skull, but he could not panic, could not react. Something dulled his thoughts, numbed his emotions, kept him rooted in place. The crow—the thing—watched him for a moment longer before splitting, its body dividing into two identical ravens.

And then, one of them changed.

What had been an abyss-dark bird only seconds ago shifted, stretched, unfurled into something unmistakably human. A woman now stood before him, arms crossed, weight shifted onto one hip, looking at him with mild amusement. She was young—maybe mid-twenties—dressed like she had walked straight out of a punk rock gig, her black tank top worn beneath an open leather jacket, dark jeans torn at the knees. A silver ankh gleamed at her throat, swaying slightly as she tilted her head. Her lips curled into a smirk, and her eyes—dark, deep, endless—held no warmth, no malice, just the quiet confidence of something that had seen everything.

Harry exhaled slowly. The ferrywoman. The one James had mentioned. The occupant of Room Three.

She studied him for a moment, then let out a breath and shrugged. “Well,” she mused, almost to herself, “I don’t believe in equivalent exchange. Normally, I take and don’t give. But…” Her smirk widened, a knowing glint in her eye. “You’re a guest of the Hotel. You carry a strong story. And James will have my skin if I just take without offering something in return.” She rolled her shoulders, stretching as if preparing for something routine. “So, kid—ask me anything. Three questions.”

The weight of her words settled over him like a thick fog.

Harry didn’t know how, didn’t know why, but he knew—this was real. More real than dreams should be. More important than anything he had ever asked before. And somewhere deep inside, something told him that the next words out of his mouth would change everything.

A thousand questions tangled in his mind, each one demanding to be spoken. Who was this woman? Was this truly a dream? Would they win? Would he survive? Would he find love, a future beyond war? But something—duty, fear, or both—held him back. Some answers were too dangerous to ask for. Some were better left unknown.

So, instead, he asked, “What… what are the Horcruxes?”

The woman’s grin widened, sharp and knowing, as if she had expected that very question. She exhaled a soft breath, tapping her fingers against her leg, and then she spoke.

“There are seven,” she said casually, her tone light, almost conversational, as if she were discussing nothing more serious than the weather. “Seven fragments of a soul, torn and buried in different vessels, keeping that madman alive far past his natural end.”

She lifted one finger. “First, Tom Riddle’s Diary. Destroyed.” Another finger. “Then, Marvolo Gaunt’s Ring. Destroyed.”

Harry’s breath caught. He knew about those. He had seen the diary dissolve into nothing under the fang of the Basilisk. He had watched the dying curse on Dumbledore’s hand.

But the woman wasn’t finished.

She lifted a third finger. “Salazar Slytherin’s Locket. Lost but within reach.” A fourth. “Helga Hufflepuff’s Cup. Hidden but not far.” A fifth. “Rowena Ravenclaw’s Diadem. Forgotten, waiting.” A sixth. “Nagini, his beloved snake. Slithering at his side.”

She paused then, tilting her head, her grin turning almost… playful. And then she lifted a seventh finger.

“And the last one,” she said, “is you, Harry.”

It was as if the world had been yanked out from under his feet. Harry took a stumbling step backward, his head shaking before he even realized what he was doing. “What?” His voice came out hoarse, barely more than a whisper. “I’m a—” The words felt alien, impossible. “I’m a Horcrux?”

The woman’s grin deepened, a spark of amusement dancing in her dark eyes. “Ah,” she said lightly, “bad reaction, Harry. You just asked me another question.”

His stomach twisted. “Wait—”

She ignored him, lifting a pale hand to gesture toward the wretched form on the station floor—the grotesque, whimpering, skinless baby curled in the filth. The raven beside it shifted, its dark eyes fixed unblinkingly on the creature, its feathers ruffling in some quiet anticipation.

“You,” the woman said, her voice laced with something unreadable, “became a Horcrux the night he tried to kill you. A fragment of his soul, already so broken, latched onto the only living thing nearby—yourself. You’ve carried him ever since. That’s why you hear his thoughts. Why you speak his tongue. Why you’re connected to him in ways no one else is.” She turned to him then, eyes gleaming with something he couldn’t name. “You were never meant to be his seventh. Just an accident. A mistake.” She exhaled a soft breath, tilting her head. “And now, you only have one question left.”

It was like the air had been sucked from his lungs.

The world around him seemed to tilt, the station warping, stretching, bending at the edges of his vision. His heart pounded in his ears, his fingers curled into fists, his throat dry—

I’m a Horcrux.

It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t a doubt. He knew. He had always known, in some terrible, buried part of himself that had whispered the truth between sleepless nights and scarred memories.

He should have felt horror. Despair. But above all… he just felt tired.

They had the answer now. They had everything they needed. The path was clear. And at the end of it, he would die. It was inevitable.

His breath was shallow as he whispered, more to himself than to her:

“Neither can live while the other survives.”

The prophecy. The words that had dictated his entire life. Understanding dawned like a slow, cruel sunrise. There was never going to be a future beyond this. No Hogwarts, no Quidditch, no waking up in the morning and thinking about anything other than war. There was only ever this. The fight. The mission. The death waiting at the end of it. His hands clenched at his sides, his breath coming faster. What did this mean? Would he have to—would he have to die?

His thoughts spiraled. He had one question left. He could ask where all the Horcruxes were, gain the final pieces of the puzzle needed to destroy Voldemort. Or… he could ask if there was a way to remove the Horcrux inside him without dying.

That was the choice. Knowledge or survival.

A coward would ask to live. A strategist would weigh the odds. But a Gryffindor—a hero—would make the only choice that mattered. Harry swallowed, his throat dry.

His voice, when it came, was steady.