"Good evening, Albus," said Croaker. "Been sleeping well?"
"Evening?" blinked Dumbledore. The long period of effective darkness was causing him some eye difficulty with the bright light of the room.
"Oh, yes," said Croaker. "We don't want you going insane due to the sheer boredom of being locked inside that room for so long. We obliviated you of much of it. It's now been two weeks since you came into our midst.
"You'll be pleased to know that Madam Bones believed you, somehow, engineered your escape through aid from an unknown accomplice. And immediately hid yourself under a Fidelius.
"The hunt's been called off, for now. Now, she and her aurors are just using their intelligence gathering resources to wait for you to pop up again. They're sure you will."
"The date?" Dumbledore asked.
Croaker smirked at him and replied, "As I said, it's been two weeks. Well; I may have exaggerated a little. It's Friday the Fifth of February. This is your thirteenth day with us.
While Dumbledore poorly tried to hide his surprise, Croaker said, "Now, we were last talking about your relationship with a young Gellert Grindelwald. What, specifically, caused you to break off your relationship with him?"
Dumbledore stared back in horror. He didn't remember speaking with Croaker about his relationship with Gellert. His last recollection had him being Legilimenced for information on Tom. Had his mind been obliviated of that knowledge? It was the only thing that made sense.
"Albus?" asked Croaker. "I'm waiting. You agreed to answer my questions or you'd be, effectively, mind raped of the information through force. You know what the price of that is. You'll end up a mindless vegetable."
Dumbledore sat there for a long few moments trying to remember. Even clues he'd been obliviated escaped him because it relied on information of what he'd been doing and finding the gap. Having been locked in one room with minimal light, in a room that didn't change, robbed him of that.
Suddenly his mind was attacked. Again, the pain was excruciating. Again, it was four Legilimencers working concert.
After a near unbearable time it suddenly stopped.
"As he previously told you, it was a difference of opinion between the two on how to go about 'The Greater Good'," said a voice from behind. "However, Ariana's death, as she was an obscurial, was regrettable, only. But, Aberforth Dumbledore also had a role to play in that. It was he who attacked Grindelwald, first."
Croaker appeared surprised. "Well. You didn't tell us that last time, Albus. I thought you promised not to hold anything back. That was naughty of you."
Dumbledore was on the information back-foot and he had no idea what to say or how to proceed. The information about he and Gellert he thought eradicated from everyone's minds. He even locked the knowledge of that inside the mind of his own brother. His own brother knew what happened, but could never speak of it.
And his sister becoming an obscurial? He thought no one but he, Abe and Gellert knew of that. Why had he told them; Croaker and his people?
"Albus?... Albus!" he heard.
Snapping his eyes up to look at Croaker he hadn't even realised he was not paying attention.
"You, as the muggles would say, zoned out on us there, Albus," said Croaker. "I think I can guess, based on what you've already told us, but why did Aberforth choose that time to attack Gellert?"
"He... he saw... he thought it was Gellert's intent to harness dear Ariana's illness as a... a... an obscurial for evil purposes," replied Dumbledore. "I... did not believe him. I did not think Gellert could be so... cold."
"I've looked it up in the past few days," said Croaker. "Apparently, through that incident in New York during the mid 1920s, Grindelwald tried to discover the identity of and gain control of a young untrained wizard named Credence Barebone, another obscurial. Apparently Newt Scamander, a student of yours, stopped him."
"Yes," replied Dumbledore. "Young Newton was a prodigy in Care of Magical Creatures study. He and his later wife, Porpentina, were nearly killed by Gellert when he was portraying the Head of the MaCUSA Auror office, Percival Graves. I'm proud to say, young Newton was soon thereafter able to defeat and capture Gellert through the use of his magical creatures.
"I still cannot figure out how MaCUSA managed to let Gellert loose again." He sighed.
Suddenly shifting track without allowing his voice or anything else to change, Croaker asked, "How did you come to the determination Tom Riddle was seeking to make six Horcruxes?"
"Seven is a powerful magical number," Dumbledore immediately replied. "After much badgering from myself, I was able to get my old friend, Horace Slughorn, to give me a memory of young Tom asking him how many Horcruxes could be made by one person. However, the memory I received from Horace was... corrupted. I think Horace tried to trick me into believing he did no such thing. But, his efforts to change the memory were very obvious. And Horace always did have a love for an esoteric question; especially from one of his favourites."
"Seven Horcruxes or seven parts of the soul?" asked Croaker.
"Seven parts," replied Dumbledore. "But, the part in young Harry was an accident."
"And how did you know he'd already created the six Horcruxes when he attacked the Potters?"
Dumbledore was confused by the question. "Pardon?" he asked.
"How... did you know... Riddle had already created the six Horcruxes when he attacked the Potters?"
That stumped the old man. "I... assumed," he replied. "I cannot see Tom having delayed in creating them."
"But, you've already told me Tom wanted the Horcruxes to be in objects of importance to him and the magical world," explained Croaker. "You told me he's spent quite a bit of time and effort searching for them. How do you know he'd already found six of them at the time he attacked the Potters?"
That had never occurred to Dumbledore. Quietly, almost muttering, he said, "It... hadn't crossed my mind―"
"You assumed," said Croaker.
"That means there may not yet be six," said Dumbledore, clearly working that out as he spoke.
"Correct," said Croaker. "Which means, the ones we've already collected and dealt with may be all he had."
"Which means young Harry can now kill him," said Dumbledore.
Croaker sighed in frustration and said, "No, Albus. It means now anyone can kill him. The prophecy is a bust."
"The prophecy orb still glows," Dumbledore firmly said.
"No, it does not," Croaker just as firmly cast back. "The day young Lord Potter went into muggle surgery and had the scar removed - that was about five weeks ago, now - the prophecy orb dimmed. It now mimics any other prophecy that is deemed to have been completed."
"No," said Dumbledore. "Tom must die by young Harry's hand."
"You're being too literal, Dumbledore," he disagreed. "Harry filling out and signing the authorisation form to undergo the surgery can, in a prophecy sense, mean the soul fragment in his wound was destroyed by his hand.
"And, remember: It's hand; not hands. That means it would be something that can only be done one-handed, such as signing a form."
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