The Reaper Weary
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, its characters, or its magical artifacts. This is a piece of fanfiction for entertainment.
The title is a tribute to the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. I do not own that either, merely noting a thematic similarity.
...
He reckons he shouldn't have lied to the boy.
(He really shouldn't have.)
Yet the little voice in his head still whispered "For the Greater Good," even after all this time. Is the phrase tinged with less darkness now that he's chosen a different path? He doesn't know, really; but the Chosen One is currently standing in front of him, wispy like a wind-blown weed, eleven and hopeful that perhaps- just perhaps- in a place where magic is real, that he could see and feel and hear and taste the reality of family after so long without.
Of course it would be Harry who found the Mirror.
Harry, who resembled James down to the very last flicker of dark eyelashes; Harry, who gazed doe-eyed with that peculiar shade of Evans green tinged with sadness and strength; Harry, who has never known a soft peck on the forehead, a bedtime story, a gentle brush of finger to cheek at night- of course it would be Harry whose hair only reached up to Dream James' midriff and enough courage to rival Dream James at his best to ask in that innocent, inquisitive way of children what he, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, saw in the Mirror.
A...pair of woolen socks, a suddenly-too-tired wizard replies kindly after waiting just a nuance of second too long, and the little shoulders droop just a fraction too low before Lily's (no, not Lily's, never again) eyes misted over again. Dumbledore won't pretend to not know the pain Harry is currently experiencing. Hadn't he, too, run a wrinkled and gnarly knuckle across the faces in the mirror, pressed too-dry lips against a mother's cheek, and read Tales of Beadle and the Bard for the miniature blonde girl happily nuzzling his palm? Didn't he know better than anyone the sharp, bone-white pain of separation as well as regret?
Even so, the older wizard reckons he probably shouldn't have lied, about this and perhaps many other things. Yet he still believes in The Greater Good and he knows as well as he knows the invisible scars binding them both that Harry carries (will carry) enough without the ghost of what might have been and now will never be.
So he lies anyway. "It does not do to dwell on dreams, Harry, and forget to live," and a suddenly-too-old ago boy nods sadly, leaving room as the faintest outline of yet another happy family fills the frame.