Prompt: essay on The Leaky Cauldron "The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore" by Theowyn
Euphemism
There is a fine distinction between the self and the others. That had been apparent to Albus since the first real conversation he had exchanged with Gellert, when their one common great ambition had been revealed to each other in the shade of Bathilda's sycamore tree. The wand - they never used its real name, secretly fearing that it might jinx their chance to pull it from the mysterious mist it was shrouded in - would obliterate opposition; the stone - Albus knew deep down how Gellert intended to use it, and even deeper down, his own intention for this object horrified him more than his friend's idea of resurrecting Inferi * - would help in calling back great wizards and witches long dead, who would aid their regime; the cloak they dismissed as almost futile, considering it as the last, almost negligible ingredient to complete a masterpiece.
Albus had not realised that their voices, from being individually clear and articulate, had molded into a single, fevered whisper, their boyish frames inclined towards each other so that Albus could see himself in Gellert's blue eyes - so like his own. That was the closest they had gone in making love; their words, contemplating the Deathly Hallows, turned into the one irresistible, frenzied voice of ambition.
From that day on, Albus always justified this urge to master death as a necessity for the Greater Good. Gellert didn't.
So Albus wondered, staring at his charred right hand, absently stroking his long beard with the other, did this tiny fact amount to the huge revelation of who was ultimately the better between the two of them? No, he didn't mean it in terms of magical or influential power. He meant, did that little, tiny fact indicate that Gellert had always been a better person? Because in the end, Albus' obsession to unite the Deathly Hallows had not really been for the Greater Good. Perhaps as a long-term goal, it could have been. But thinking hard and long back on those scorching eighteen-year-old days of infatuation, Albus had to admit that the whole wand-stone-cloak affair had been for himself. Hence the initial statement - there is a fine distinction between the self and the others. And he had proved to be flawed as every other person, because he denied his true motivation.
Gellert was a better person, and immediately Albus tried to bury that thought with accusations including thirst for power - dictatorship - torture - murders - imprisonment - Nurmengard...
Yet Gellert had never been hypocritical. He had never tried to explain his disturbing ambition. Yes, he had etched the words For the Greater Good on his own prison, but Albus knew that he had done it to spite him, to remind him of all that he had missed out in choosing the cautious path. Gellert had never believed in that euphemism: For the Greater Good. Actually, he had never believed in euphemisms at all - no manipulations, no 'pulling the strings', no subtleness. His rise, his peak and his downfall occurred in a flaring flame of ruthless drive, blinding and easily put out.
His own hypocrisy seemed huge to Albus as he sat pondering. It manifested itself already from the fact that he had refused to call the Elder Wand by its name, when now he encouraged the wizarding world not to fear uttering the pseudonym of Tom Riddle. And most importantly, The Greater Good had been an euphemism for A World Dominated by the two Most Worthy Wizards who Will Rule Together Forever. Forever. That had been Albus' tragedy - falling in love with Gellert during that warm sultry summer of 1899 at Godric's Hollow, falling in the pit of the Deathly Hallows, falling for the dream to be with him without even Death being able to part them.
So if the Hallows had only been the means to get to Gellert, had Albus ever been enticed by immortality, then?
It was another summer, many years later, and Fawkes the phoenix fluttered towards her master, gently pecking at the rim of his glasses. Gifted with that singular and immense intelligence, Albus reached his eighteen years of age with very few achievements he had yet to accomplish - or so he thought. Acquiring immortality was the ultimate goal for him. At fourteen, his patronus changed from that of an owl into a phoenix, and his perceptive nature immediately recognised its significance. A phoenix never dies. It is immortal. Fawkes trembled slightly on his shoulder.
Defeating Gellert in the duel of 1945 brought two significant changes in Albus' life. Firstly, it extinguished Albus' passion for him. It was as though Gellert's fall sapped all the hidden fascination dry, that respect that had fuelled his attraction for him. And second, Albus came into possession of the wand.
It was as though Gellert's devouring ambition for power had been transferred to him through the wand. It took hold of Albus, transfixed him, and for the first time, he understood the beauty of individual glory. At eighteen, Albus had dreamt of power shared with Gellert; at sixty-four, he craved for his own absolute triumph. So when the next Dark Lord - prodigious talent, inhuman ruthlessness, plenty of subtleness - made his appearance twenty years later, the opportunity presented itself. He, Albus Dumbledore, would have defeated him. Harry would have had to help him, considering he was too much involved in the upcoming struggle. But accomplishment would have been certain, if only he could have found the instruments for victory. The stone, the cloak.
Obviously everything - everything - changed once Albus discovered that Voldemort had created Horcruxes. That happened in Harry's second year at Hogwarts, when the destroyed diary of Tom Riddle sat on the very same desk he was resting an elbow upon. Albus could not control the slight twitch of his left eyebrow, the infinitesimal manifestation of annoyance. He didn't want to remember the disappointment, the agonising disappointment of that discovery. No. He had painfully recovered from it, and had steered his master manipulations in another direction - resting all hope on Harry. True, he had not yet introduced the Horcruxes to that young boy, to whom he had grown quite attached. He had been planning to do so in Harry's sixth year, starting a month from now. He reckoned that at least he would have been the one moving the pieces across the board.
Albus finally averted his eyes from the blackened hand to another object on the table. It was a black stone with a jagged crack running down the centre*. It was the stone, the resurrection stone he had recovered just a mere week ago, when he had been hunting for another Horcrux. And it represented the eternal conflict: Horcrux or Hallows? The Greater Good or The Path to Glory? Because now Albus was almost at the heart of it all. In the sixth-year dormitory for boys at the Gryffindor Tower was the final, missing puzzle - the cloak, in possession of a boy who blindly trusted him.
Choosing the Hallows meant that he would have to live with the sound of a ticking clock, smite through all the Horcruxes in a limited time, because the curse bubbling and boiling in his charred, blackened right hand would kill him within a year, as promised by Severus.
He couldn't be less ready to die. He once heard of a curious kind of method that Muggles use to keep an even more curious kind of Muggle fish alive - the mackerel. Being deprived of the use of instant apparition, Muggles have to resort to physical transportation, and these mackerel fish seem to be tastier when not immediately killed after being captured. Thus they are kept in tanks while curious devices called 'trucks' take them to the market. These fish seem to retain very poor control of their 'temper'. In fact, they explode to death from the pressure of being kept in closed confines. To keep them from dying in the tanks, therefore, the Muggles ingeniously thought about putting a predatory fish among the mackerel. The method worked, because the fear of being killed was an incentive for mackerel to survive.
Albus felt like this conflict was the biggest incentive he had ever had in his long life. And he was not ready to die - not yet.
He thought of Gellert, of his impulsive outbursts of emotion, of his honest and easily expressed cruelty, of that unconcealed glimmer of madness in his eyes. He thought of how his own only spontaneous action had been skimming his lips on Gellert's, one particularly hot afternoon when the blonde had fallen asleep on his lap. He wasn't even sure if that counted, since the latter had been asleep.
When he stood up, much later on, he headed for the cabinet where he kept the flasks that contained all the memories he had deemed worthy to remember. As he selected one after the other, he asked himself how he had come to believe in his own most famous and most pretentious euphemism, For the Greater Good. The answer presented itself when his left hand fingers grasped the last flask - the one that held Horace's memory with Tom Riddle.
He did not wish to be a lesser person than Gellert.
Notes:
* In the Deathly Hallows book, chapter "King's Cross" Dumbledore reveals that while Grindelwald planned to use the stone to make Inferi, he wished to call back his parents to take care of Ariana, so liberating him from this duty. I found this more shocking than Grindelwald's aim.
* The description of the stone is identical to that of J.K. Rowling in the Deathly Hallows book, chapter "The Forest Again".
By me: I know that we would like to believe that Dumbledore redeemed himself and was tempted to wear the ring/horcrux/hallow in order to bring back his parents and Ariana to apologise to them. However, after reading the essay I mentioned above, I had to reconsider Dumbledore's honesty, because even J.K. Rowling claimed he was much of a Machiavellian character.