Disclaimer: not mine, don't sue, thank you.
AN: this is pretty much a oneshot, but I might write more later on, as inspiration strikes. Concrit is welcome! Also I might have gotten some details wrong since it has been a while since I read HBP or DH; please forgive discrepancies.
The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore
1.
When first he heard of his mother's death, Albus experienced shock followed by swift calculation. His mind instantly comprehended Ariana's role in the tragedy, and at once understood that a suitable lie would need to be crafted to protect her.
Only later in the private dark would grief come, open-armed to embrace him: and he would imagine his tears to be of the River Lethe, that he might taste them and forget – if only he could shed them. But his eyes were greedy and stubborn and refused to weep.
2.
Albus does not love easily, or deeply.
It seems he was born loving his family, loving before cognizant of the emotion – his avenging father, implacable mother, oddborn brother, endearing sister. He feels some affection for his long time friend, Elphias – a certain degree of loyalty, an acknowledgement of companionship. He has a student's admiration and respect for Nicholas and Perenelle.
For Gellert there was a wildness, a spontaneous passion, a wondering blaze at discovering this unexpected gift of a man: this mind that was like his in brilliance, yet completely different in mechanics. Albus had never experienced a true meeting of equals, himself having been so beyond his fellows as to be peerless, and was delighted, awed, dizzied by Gellert. Love seemed inevitable; and flared so hot within him that Albus was immolated in the flame.
Love seemed inevitable, and so Albus burned, and what was weak about him became ash and what remained was strong, yet brittle: brittle as Ariana, her alarmed cry, her broken corpse.
Albus knows love as the great and terrible burden it is for how it has shaped his life – for how it had driven his father to murder, his mother to secrecy, his brother to quiet wrath.
Love for Lily Evans turned Severus into a spy to save Lily Potter; and in time Albus came to love Severus, too, a mentor's joy in his student's triumphs, worry in his student's defeats.
He is not surprised when Lily dies to save her son: when her love is force enough to save the world. The love of a parent for her child is one he has borne witness to for years, years. He does not expect to feel that love, himself, years later, yet does, having watched Harry grow, having seen how easily and eagerly and effortlessly Harry loves, how wholly.
Harry is such a good child, is becoming such a good man. It is impossible not to admire him: it is impossible not to take joy in his living. He forgives trespasses so completely where others would grudge; he has been wounded, gravely wounded, but heals. Albus does not intend to love him, not knowing what he knows, suspecting what he suspects, doesn't intend to love futilely when love would make his task yet more difficult than it already is – but love is irrepressible, swells up, chokes him from the inside until he cannot breathe without tasting it. He loves the boy: the boy fated to die. He loves him, he loves him, the child he is preparing for death.
(He knows he sees Harry too softly, unfocused and through rose coloured lenses. He knows this and it doesn't seem to matter. Knowing can't make him stop.)
Albus does not love easily: love is a hard thing, diamond-edged. He does not love deeply: even shallows can drown him. He's not a cold man, but he is a calculating one, and love defies formulae. It skews all things and has its own gravity.
Albus does not love easily, or deeply, but he does love, and it is enough to torment him until his dying day, enough to bolster him so he does not die with bitterness, for he cannot regret it: no matter what he's seen of the consequences, he can't regret love.
3.
Not since Circe has any magic-blessed human been so skilled with Transfiguration. Yet the greatest contribution Albus has made to the field is in acclimating it to use in battle.
Should he be ashamed? His work has taken lives.
No. War-wizard, he shakes his head; his work has saved lives, as well.
(This is an excuse and a justification.)
4.
War-wizard is what he is, defined in his prime through war, fighting yet more through the ages of his decrepitude. This is something shameful Albus does not divulge, not even to his oldest confidante – held secret, close to his heart: the heat of battle inflames him, as only ever Gellert had done before; the quickfire pace of a mortal duel engages all his faculties and alerts him, makes him feel so stridently alive.
Something in him thrills when, at the duel's conclusion, his opponent lies dead and Albus triumphant, victor.
5.
When he is weary Albus will don his cloak woven with charms to be nondescript and go to his brother's pub and sit in the corner and watch, hooded, as his fellow patrons come and go.
If Aberforth minds this intrusion he says nothing. But then, Aberforth often says nothing, to Albus.
6.
Aberforth: Albus is spiteful with him. Hidden malice, barbed digs, so kindly spoken as to be unanswerable without looking the fool. This is long practice from childhood, where all insults had to pass Kendra's attuned radar to land direct hits.
Aberforth, so gruff, an embarrassing relation with his questionable charms, his everpresent goat. Aberforth, who loved Ariana without also resenting her.
Aberforth will never forgive Albus for thinking himself beyond human. For not fulfilling that belief. (Albus knows his hubris has bought his brother's disdain, high cost for an ugly jewel.)
To Aberforth, Albus cannot be proud: to Aberforth, Albus is known.
7.
Some memories Albus can't risk to the pensieve, can't risk to recall.
Most of these feature Ariana. His sweet, damaged sister.
He can't bear not knowing if his was the curse to kill her, but more, is too afraid to know. He is a coward. He knows discovering the truth would destroy him.
But before that, another memory, one buried so deeply he can pretend to have forgotten it. That day, when he was a child, when she was a child, when their family was whole and her magic a bright presence rather than a ruined one.
That day, when she was in the enclosure at the back of the house – that day, when she was tortured – that day. Did she call for him? Him, up in his room three flights away, his window open to let the breeze in as he read his texts for his upcoming first year at Hogwarts: did she scream for him to come? Could he hear her voice, carried by the wind, did he hear her, did he ignore her, that benign neglect of an older brother? Did she shriek to be saved, did she beg for him, for his protection?
Did he sit and do nothing as his sister was broken? Was he idle as she was broken? Was he ignorant as she was broken, as she was broken did he yawn?
His worst nights as an old man are not remembering her death but the sense that he can hear her voice, terrified, crying Albus, unanswered.
8.
He spent his life on the Resurrection Stone and in the end could not use it.
It seemed there was a bargain in his abstinence. As if by tempting himself with it yet resisting he offered to it an exchange. I am not your master, he thought to it. I will give you to one who will be your master. He will make Harry the Master of Death and so save him, the boy he loves.
Or maybe this is an excuse for cowardice. Maybe even now he can't bear facing Ariana, his mother and father, his failure. He has trouble enough meeting Aberforth's eyes. The only other to know the entirety of his shame is confined to Nurmengard, never to leave.
Maybe he is a coward. Maybe he will never be anything but a coward. Maybe he will never be anything but ashamed.
9.
At first, Albus is kind to young Rubeus Hagrid because he feels it thwarts Riddle, just a little. Oh, he sees Hagrid as an innocent caught in a devil's web, and for that he would intercede regardless; but something in the way Riddle targeted Hagrid, stared at him with loathing malice, made Albus respond in counter-kind to the half-giant.
He knows Hagrid to be, while not particularly bright, an able student, eager to learn, eager to please. He finds Hagrid to be gratifyingly grateful to him – a man sworn to Albus' name – loyal, to a fault. Moreover, despite his greater physical size, Hagrid is obedient. He is – he is such a good follower, he is so reliable, perhaps not the smartest, but he would die for Albus, Albus can see it in his eyes – and – but, no. No.
That has become Gellert's game, gathering minions to his cause. No.
Albus struggles as he learns to condescend less, respect more.
His task is made easier when he thinks, privately, upon observation of Hagrid's treatment of dangerous beasts, had Hagrid the care of Ariana she would grow to be an old woman, merry and bright, not struck dead at fourteen.
10.
They say it was the greatest duel ever witnessed.
What they don't know is that it would be much simpler, much faster done, had either wished the other dead.
Even with a lifetime imprisonment in Nurmengard as grim alternative, Albus cannot imagine – does not want to fathom – the world without Gellert in it. Should such a thing come to pass, he doesn't think he would wish to live.
He can't say if the same is for Gellert, but he thinks. He hopes.
11.
Sometimes a wind brings an intimate whisper to Albus' ear, or the water traces words on his skin as it falls as rain from the sky, or the earth cracks into a familiar pattern when he walks across it, and he knows these are all the ways Gellert now has of sending him messages, love letters borne through esoteric channels, possible only through the oldest and deepest magics, possible only by magicians such as he and Albus.
12.
If Harry were to meet Ariana, Albus knows, he would be so gentle with her. So kind. Protective but not stifling, authoritative yet not censorious. Ariana would never shrink from him, never fear. He would not yell at her for her uncontrolled magic. He would understand, having once had uncontrolled magic himself; having an open and accepting heart.
Harry loves without thinking. Thinking: Albus can never stop.
13.
This is Albus' secret: he is angry, still, and betrayed, in the hidden-most part of him, that his father chose to avenge Ariana's torture and then chose to safeguard her from the Ministry's interference, paying the price of his own liberty and then his life, when Azkaban took it. Albus is still so – so – childishly, so – betrayed, sickened with betrayal, at how his father could die for his sister and not live for him – (he is still grieving)
And yet he knows had his father chosen any other path he would have nothing but contempt and outright hatred; unreasoning and unreasonable, but that is the nature of the mysterious organ, the human heart.
14.
This is Albus' secret: when Ariana, bewildered, asked for her mother, Albus told her, dull and vindictive, thinking it would not penetrate her shattered mind, "She is dead. You've killed her."
It was an unkindness none but Aberforth could expect of him, and even Aberforth might have been startled. Albus regretted it at once, of course. It was no use. His regret could not stopper Ariana's tears. For a moment upon seeing them, Albus thought, savage, Good. It's what you deserve. And after was aghast at himself, for the satisfaction he had felt, even when he knew it wasn't Ariana's fault – even when he knew it was the magic she couldn't control.
But the buried part of him insisted, childish, that she had taken father and mother both from him, left him an orphan – left him bereft – alone.
The irony of course was that it was not until Ariana's own death that Albus learned true loneliness, and it was a lesson he would never forget.
15.
This is Albus' secret: for all his talk of it being the next great adventure, he fears his death.
He still goes to it gladly.