Chapter Text
Elena Gilbert woke to the sound of beeping.
A sharp, antiseptic scent filled his nostrils, mingled with the metallic tang of blood. Elena’s head had turned, noting the white walls, the strange muggle machines, the slowly wilting flowers in an old vase.
He lifted one hand: small, pale, uncalloused. There were no liver spots. He stared at it with fascination.
He found a mirror in the bathroom and stared.
A young woman stared back.
Long dark hair, brown eyes too large for the face that held them. A bruise at the temple, yellowing with age. She looked… breakable. Human in a way his old body had not been for decades.
“Well,” he said to her reflection, “we appear to be in some difficulty.”
She did not answer.
Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore knew three things: he was alive, he was very small, he was not in his body.
“Hey,” the boy said, voice rough. “You scared us.”
Dumbledore smiled, soft and reassuring, a smile honed over decades of putting people at ease.
“I’m very sorry about that,” he said sincerely.
The woman crossed the room in three steps and pulled him into a tight hug. He froze for exactly half a second, and then hugged back.
“Oh thank God,” she whispered into his hair. “Oh God, Elena…”
Elena.
Dumbledore tested the name in his mind. It did not resonate, not quite. But names, he reflected, were doors, and doors could be walked through in time.
“I’m here,” he said quietly, because it seemed the right thing to say.
And perhaps it was true.
A nurse wandered in, an ICU member, if his old muggle knowledge accompanied correctly.
She asked about pain levels, memory, dizziness. He answered truthfully. There was no leftover pain, no dizziness, and his memory intact… just not the memories she meant.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” she had asked gently.
Ah.
There was the delicate part.
Dumbledore considered several options, including the truth (inadvisable), partial truth (awkward), and creative truth (useful).
“I was… very tired,” he said. “And then I wasn’t.”
She probed, and Albus could not find himself the correct date.
She nodded, assuming trauma fog, deigning an immediate follow-up with neurology. Humans were very good at explaining away miracles when miracles were inconvenient.
The woman and boy sat. They talked. Well, they talked, he listened.
The woman’s name was Jenna, Elena’s aunt, a guardian, recently thrust into parenthood by tragedy. The boy was Jeremy, a brother. Grieving, angry, afraid.
Albus learned, piece by piece, that Elena Gilbert’s parents were dead.
He did not need to close his eyes to imagine the terror of it, he’d seen too many drowning souls for that. The grief in the room was thick, unspoken but omnipresent.
He did not feel Elena’s grief, not properly, not yet. But he felt something adjacent: a quiet, aching compassion for a girl whose life had been ripped open, and a sober sense of responsibility for the one now living it.
Later, when they’d left him to rest, he lay back against the pillows and stared at the ceiling.
Just a teenage girl’s life and an unfamiliar town humming faintly with strange, old power.
Elena Gilbert’s soul had long left this plane, and in return, Albus had taken its place.
Ordinarily he would’ve objected to the pronouns, but necessity, as they say, is the mother of adaptation.
He reached inward again, experimentally, and brushed against that warmth beneath the skin.
It stirred. Not magic. Something else.
Something that will require study.
A second chance, or perhaps merely a continuation, stripped of every tool he had once wielded so effortlessly.
“Well,” he murmured, voice higher, softer, carrying an unexpected lilt of Virginian hills, “this is certainly one of the more creative interpretations of ‘the next great adventure.’”
How splendidly unpredictable.
“Very well,” he murmured to the quiet room.
“Let us begin.”
—
Dr. Henson Matthews, the neurologist overseeing Elena Gilbert’s case, leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, while Dr. Diya Patel, the consulting psychiatrist, flipped through a thin chart on the table between them.
A resident, Dr. Reed Chen, sat quietly taking notes, eyes flicking between the two seniors.
It was day five post-discharge, and Elena had come in for a follow-up MRI and cognitive assessment.
The scans were clean, no bleeds, no swelling beyond mild residual edema, but the behavioral reports from Jenna Sommers and Jeremy Gilbert painted a different picture.
Classic dissociative amnesia or fugue didn’t usually rewrite personality this cleanly.
The personality shift, the elevated vocabulary, philosophical detachment, emotional flatness-none of it fits neatly into DID. Dissociation explains compartmentalization, but not this sudden gain in cognitive domains.
When Elena is found to magically know things that she had never known before, and case after case is ruled out, they diagnose him with potential Acquired Savant Syndrome within a week.
He allowed himself a private, inward chuckle.
—
For the first time in a century, no one expected him to save the world.
He did, however, inherit a family.
This unsettled him far more than the body swap.
He also had not anticipated how deeply Elena’s memories would echo inside him. Not as images, exactly, but as emotional reflexes. He flinched at her bedroom door. He felt warmth when he saw childhood photographs. He experienced a strange tightness in his chest when passing her parents’ room.
These reactions were not his.
But they were real.
He concluded that identity was less a matter of memory than continuity. Not what one remembers, but what one chooses to protect. And he was, increasingly, choosing to protect Elena Gilbert’s life.
He did not know the future of this world. He did not know its history.
That also unsettled him.
Neither Jenna nor Jeremy spoke when Albus found himself stepping into the kitchen.
Jeremy slouched at the table, hoodie up, picking at a bowl of cereal that had gone soggy.
He cataloged their reactions: Jenna’s anxious hovering, Jeremy’s guarded resentment.
Albus was the one to break the tension. “Morning.”
Jenna turned, relief flickering across her face before it tangled with confusion. “Hey. How’re you feeling?”
“Better,” Albus replied. He let his gaze drift to the window, unfocused, as though the world outside were a puzzle he couldn’t quite solve.
Jenna set a plate of slightly charred toast in front of him. “You barely ate at the hospital. Try something.” Her voice cracked on the last word.
She busied herself wiping the already-clean counter. “The doctor said the amnesia might fade. Or… not. We just take it day by day.”
Albus nodded slowly, breaking off a piece of toast but not eating it. “Day by day,” he echoed, letting the phrase hang like a question.
He found himself busy with trailing the spines of the books sitting out on the counter.
Jeremy broke the silence first, voice rough. “You gonna stand there staring at Mom’s books all day, or what?”
Albus turned, expression calm. “I was merely considering the breadth of human imagination contained within these volumes. Remarkable, really, how stories persist across generations.”
Jeremy stared at him.
“You’re really freaking me out.”
He winced, and backtracked. “I mean,” he tried again, “I’m sorry. I know this is awful. For all of us.”
Jeremy merely kept staring. Jenna stared. “No. Run that last bit by me again.”
Elena Gilbert had no logical explanation for what she found herself blurting out a moment ago.
Albus considered several answers. I am a hundred and fifteen and currently in a teenage girl’s body in what appears to be a world tragically lacking in magical infrastructure seemed unlikely to comfort him.
So he settled on the amnesia excuse, the trauma.
The boy’s face crumpled. The woman’s eyes welled.
“Don’t joke,” he said hoarsely. “Not about that.”
Albus felt something twist inside him, sharp and aching and not at all his own. The grief surged suddenly, violently, like a wave breaking through a dam. He found himself inhaling sharply.
“That wasn’t… you don’t say things like that.”
“I don’t?”
“No,” Jeremy said. “You say stuff like ‘whatever’ and slam doors.”
“Entirely reasonable,” Albus agreed. He adjusted seamlessly, as he had across centuries of odd social situations. “Sorry. That came out… stranger than intended. What I meant was, hello.”
He stared at them staring at him.
“I should quite like to know what species I am.”
Jeremy blinked the tears away from his eyes, a picture of teenage bafflement. “What?”
A pause. Jeremy and Jenna exchanged a look.
He softened his expression and tried again. “I mean, I’m… sore. Tired. But I don’t seem to be… broken. It was a joke.”
It was not, but Albus would not be getting this information from of them, it seems.
Jenna’s eyes filled further.
“Oh,” she whispered. “Oh, honey.”
She pulled him into a hug so suddenly he barely had time to register it before arms were around him, tight, shaking, and his face was pressed into her shoulder, breathing in fabric softener.
Dumbledore stiffened briefly, startled by the physical intimacy, then relaxed into it.
Ah.
So this was what being seventeen again felt like.
Her shoulders trembled.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said into his hair. “I don’t know how to do this. Your parents-“
Albus found himself meeting Jenna’s gaze. She held such fierce, fragile hope. Albus leaned forward and put a comforting hand on his new family member’s shoulder.
“I find myself in possession of very few certainties at present. But this much I know: you are doing remarkably well in a situation that would have broken many.”
Her lips trembled. “You sound like my dad.”
Jeremy had no such qualms.
“You hit your head too hard and now I’m gonna have to explain to everyone at school how a really old sage took over your body who read too many self help books.”
Oh, Jeremy.
That’s right, Albus was a she now.
“That’s not a normal seventeen-year-old answer, Elena.”
“No,” he agreed pleasantly. “I’ve always been something of an outlier.”
Jeremy snorted softly, wiping at his eyes. “You’re weird.”
“Frequently,” he said warmly.
Jeremy stared at him for a long moment, suspicion warring with exhaustion. Then he huffed, the sound almost a laugh. “You’re so freaking weird right now. Like, next-level weird. But… I don’t know. At least you’re still saying dumb stuff. That’s kind of you.”
He studied her another second, then nodded, as though deciding something.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. That’s fine. I can work with weird.”
Jeremy pushed off the table and came closer, hands in his hoodie pockets. He stopped a few feet away from him, studying Elena’s face, studying him, with an intensity that spoke of fear poorly disguised as indifference.
“You okay?” he asked.
Albus considered.
“No,” he said honestly. “But I expect I will be.”
Jeremy stared, eyes flickering, cataloging his sisters face. He seems to have come to a mental decision. He turned back towards the door and begun walking out. “Jenna made gross oatmeal.”
Jenna was still crying. “It’s gluten free.”
And just like that, the flip in Elena Gilbert was accepted.
But many doctors appointments are still panickedly set in motion.
—
It was Elena’s parents funeral, and he ended up surrounded by all those who knew him, yet he knew not of a single face.
Albus stood, smoothing down the front of the dress with the dignity of a man who had once presided over Wizengamot trials and centuries-old wars. And now, apparently, had knees that wobbled slightly when locking into place. But, at least his knees worked.
“Apologies,” he said pleasantly. “I was… recalibrating.”
The blonde girl stared.
The dark-haired girl blinked.
Albus adjusted immediately. “I mean- uh, I spaced out. Sorry.”
Better.
The blonde girl, Caroline, his mind supplied helpfully, though he had no idea how, studied him with suspicion. “Are you okay? Like, actually okay?”
What a fascinating question. He considered it honestly.
“No,” he said cheerfully. “But I suspect that’s the correct answer today.”
Caroline did not appear reassured.
The minister spoke. Albus had heard this speech in a hundred variations and given it more than once. It never improved.
Two names on a plaque. Miranda Gilbert. Grayson Gilbert.
He watched the first shovel of dirt fall and felt Elena’s, his, throat tighten painfully. Tears blurred his vision without permission.
Well. That wouldn’t do.
He let them fall anyway.
It was important, he thought, not to deny grief its natural course. Suppression led to rot. Rot led to ghosts, literal ones sometimes, and no one wanted that.
Still, once the first wave passed, he found himself oddly calm.
Caroline leaned in. “Elena, you’re freaking me out.”
He glanced sideways. “Am I?”
“You cried for like, two seconds and then just… stopped.”
Bonnie shifted closer. “Elena… you don’t have to be strong right now.”
“Oh, I’m not,” he said brightly. “I’m merely upright.”
This did not help.
Jenna wandered over, seeing the stares. She was rubbing her temple. “Elena, do you want to go home?”
“Eventually,” Albus said. “But not immediately. Funerals are… liminal spaces. It feels disrespectful to rush them.”
“…Did you read that in a book?” Caroline demanded.
“Yes,” he said. “Six.”
Bonnie sighed, eyeing her warily. Her voice went soft. “I heard the rumors… but this… Elena, talk to me. What are you feeling?”
He looked down at the grass, wet and flattened by shoes and sorrow.
“Like I have been given something precious I do not yet know how to hold,” he said softly. “And I am determined not to drop it.”
Bonnie’s mouth parted slightly.
Caroline whispered, “Okay, that was… actually kind of beautiful.”
“Thank you,” Albus said, beaming.
That somehow made it worse.
—
“Uncle John,” he said softly, voice carrying just a hint of that old twinkle. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost. Or perhaps more. The dead do have a way of lingering, don’t they?”
John blinked, caught off guard. “What?”
Albus-Elena, waved a hand airily, as though dispelling smoke. “Oh, nothing. Just… the cemetery air. It makes one philosophical.”
John stared, brow furrowing. “You sound… different. The doctors said amnesia, but-
“But nothing,” Albus interrupted gently, stepping closer. He reached out and patted John’s arm with Elena’s slender hand, the gesture oddly paternal despite the reversed roles.
“I’ll see you around, Uncle John.”
Albus Dumbledore was here to stay, and he intended to make the most out of the encore.