A/N: The title of this fic was inspired by a quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. "Hate is too great a burden to bear." Please, as always, read and review. I probably won't be working on fics for quite a while--I'm giving NaNoWriMo a shot this year. I think everyone reading this should do it as well!
He would love to hate Albus Dumbledore. Oh, how dearly he would love to seethe and scorn! He's certain Hermione does. Whenever the accursed name surfaces over the Weasley dinner table, she gives that little sniff and gets that glint in her eyes. She's always been one for righteous anger. She's tried comfort him a few times, to say that she knows how he feels, how he rages at being used, lied to.
But she doesn't. She doesn't because that's not how he feels at all; it's simply what he wishes he could feel. If he could bring himself boiling to hatred, the pain could disappear like steam rising from Molly's favorite kettle. For a while his insides would be blistered, scorched, but ultimately all would fade to blessed emptiness.
He's caught in between, you see. Hermione and Ron—hell, even Molly, in her way—have made the transition from loving to hating, but he can't bring himself to do it. He, the Boy Who Lived, Albus Dumbledore's greatest tool, cannot bring himself to loathe the man who tinkered with his life, twisting and pulling the marionette strings to suit his own ends.
For the greater good. It's a phrase that haunts him now, skims across his mind when he lies awake at night trying to lose himself in Ginny's breathing. He wants to swear he'll never do anything for the greater good, but he can't. How could he? He's felt the weight of the world bowing his shoulders, had the lives of billions of people resting at the tip of his wand. Who's to say what he wouldn't do to keep it all from happening again?
Ah, but there's the difference. It was never what Dumbledore did. It was what he manipulated Harry into doing. Perhaps he couldn't have done it himself. But he could've damn well tried! Thinking this, Harry rolls away from Ginny, punches his pillow, and can almost feel the angering simmering beneath his skin. Almost, but not quite.
If anything makes him angry, it's the destruction of perfection. Dumbledore was his paragon of virtue, the only true and right and strong thing Harry had to cling to in his dark, messy world. More than that, he was family, or as close to it as one starving orphan-child could get. To see the silver tarnish, the bright spark die, well…it was a crushing blow. The disillusionment, abandonment, the utter desolation he'd felt when all the skeletons came tumbling out from the closet…back then, he could get mad, but now he hasn't the strength.
Perhaps it's the guilt. His guilt? Dumbledore's guilt? Who's to say? Every day he wrestles with guilt, for Cedric and Sirius and Dobby and Fred and Moody and everyone, everyone he couldn't save. And every day, the guilt conquers him. He carries it in his stomach, a congealed mass of tremendous weight that dissolves and reforms in the dark of night. He bears his own crosses and those of others, perhaps even some of Dumbledore's. Sometimes he thinks he must have some sort of complex. He mentions it to Ginny and she laughs, and for a few moments the weight is lifted and the world shines. But the glimmer never lasts. It's like looking through a soap bubble—everything is dazzling until it pops.
The others have all found their scapegoats—Death Eaters, traitors, Voldemort himself…or Dumbledore. They've wound their own sins around the bodies of a fallen saint and come away clean, but Harry can't. He was misled, misused, betrayed, and broken.
He would love to hate Albus Dumbledore. Instead, all he can do is wish the greatest Headmaster Hogwarts ever saw was back, back to make him feel loved and protected even if it was (mostly) a lie.