The old man stared quite steadily at the hat.

The hat just sat there. It was a hat, after all, not a person. Everyone knows hats cannot talk.

The old man and the hat were presently in a rather large, crumbling, ruinous old castle. There were no ceilings; they had fallen down ages ago. The jagged walls were adorned not with tapestries, but with thick carpets of green, clinging vines. Across the rocky hills a large, ominous forest could be seen. Spindly tree branches reached greedily towards the sky.

The old man paid all of this no mind.

His beard was grey and untrimmed, his clothing tattered and full of holes. His broken spectacles hung off his nose. Were you to approach him, you'd immediately take a few steps back, hands clasped over your nose. The Scottish countryside does not afford many places to bathe.

Quite suddenly, the old man spoke.

"I have a plan," he mumbled, quite obviously speaking the tattered hat. "I'm going to tell him everything."

The old man stood up from the chunk of rock he had been perched on. He began to pace back and forth in the remnants of what had once been a private chamber. There was half a flight of stairs in the corner of the room, once grand, now useless.

"Anger is a good thing." The old man was speaking more clearly now. "It's good that he's mad. It shows he still cares." The hat remained where it was.

"I would be mad too, if my godfather had just died." The man stared sadly at what used to be a doorway. It was a depressing moment, watching the black-haired boy storm out of his office.

Albus Dumbledore rarely regretted his decisions. This decision, however, the decision to withhold such dangerous information to a young man who needed it dearly, was weighing on his mind.

"What do you think?" Albus asked the hat. Once again, the hat said nothing. "Should I have told him?"

In the far-off distance, the sun inched ever closer to the horizon. Shadows were appearing, and the old, grey castle took on a muted tone. The old man and the lifeless hat carried on with their charade, creating worlds full of bravery and daring, worlds were magic existed and everyone got their happy ending.

Life had not been good for Albus Dumbledore.

This was just his coping mechanism.

Sorry if this is too sad. Please review anyway.