Dumbledore:
Truth Be Told
Disclaimer: You know the drill...
A/N: In the Neo-Pagan religion, magic is spelled with a "ck." I am using it here because we all know how eccentric Dumbledore can be, right?
I watch calmly as the boy in front of me shows the temper of a redhead. But after all, who can blame him? Sirius Black was dross to Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange: only an annoying leaf in their aim of killing Harry Potter.
I want to help the lad I have just spoken of, but how? He has been here, in this office, every year of his magickal education, or I have been to him; yet those times, he and I were merely thinking together, aloud, of Voldemort's return to power. That night has been with us since last year, Harry's fourth year, but tonight is bigger. Those of us who studied this type of magick in the old days, especially during the European Witchcraze, called the magick holiday of Yule "The Time of the Greatest Darkness." And this is indeed a time of great darkness for our young Mr. Potter standing in front of me now.
He has destroyed many of my most treasured possessions, including the one from the Tornado Alley region in America, but a simple repairing spell with put all right once again. For is not Harry's loss far greater than mine? He has lost perhaps the closest person to a father he has ever had, and all I have lost are a few instruments: As I see it, the instruments are easily repaired. Sirius Black is dead, gone forever; and, as a particularly wonderful American Muggle author puts it in her Anna Pidgeon mysteries, "non-salvageable."
We talk for a long time, Harry and I, before I permit him to leave. Tell him the truth, I keep telling myself.
But sometimes, truth is not always what you want to hear, or indeed, even speak of.
But sometimes, truth must be told, especially in the times of greatest darkness.