open RP: Albus Dumbledore returns

[lemondrop-party.livejournal.com]

(( Approved by the mods, jumped through the appropriate hoops, et voila ))



There had been no beginning and no end. There was only a kernel, hard and impregnable.

Inside, what had been a consciousness lay dormant: unknowing, unbeing, protected in the dark.

A timeless time later, fissures formed throughout that hard shell. Chitinous shards fell away. It was an ugly process. A man unfolded his limbs with a creak and crackle of joints, aching and tired.

This is no rebirth, he thought.

There was some sadness in the thought, though it was by no means a self-pitying sadness. He simply wished his time within that curious chrysalis could have restored some measure of himself beyond what he had been at the moment of his death, perhaps even some measure of his youth, for he suspected he would need every ounce of his power to confront whatever he had been resurrected to face.

He sighed and got to his feet amid the mess of shed kernel and broken glass. "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað," he told himself, aloud but barely audible, speaking only for himself.

Language had returned to him already, all his languages.

And he had returned to his Hogwarts.

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore brushed with age-knotted hands at his grease-spotted robes -- not butter, he noted, swiping a fingertip through a thick spot and taking a taste; no, you would call it butter, but it was certainly some kind of vegetable oil -- and, with labored and measured steps, made his way out of the popcorn room.

(( Dumbledore's emo mumblings are from the poem "The Battle of Maldon." A serviceable translation, not my own:
"Our hearts must grow resolute, our courage more valiant, our spirits must be greater, though our strength grows less."
Cut tag text is, of course, HP canon: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire ch. 16, Dumbledore's words concerning the Goblet of Fire.))