Written for the Cluedo/Clue challenge for the prompts 'Albus Dumbledore', 'Cloak' and 'Satisfied'.
I'm fairly sure this is actually 1700 words of ridiculousness as the eccentric Dumbledore searches for the perfect cloak and gets quite emotional about it, but that's where my muse went so I'm just going to go with it.
Albus Dumbledore received his first cloak when he was three years old. It was navy blue with no embellishments, very practical and serviceable.
He liked it. It was a warm and useful cloak and as a child he enjoyed watching it billow behind him as he ran around the garden in his house. He liked the charms it contained so that it expanded as he grew taller.
It was a perfectly decent cloak and it lasted for five years of hard use before the charms wore off so that it frayed and no longer expanded in size.
It was decent, but even as a child he longed for something more in his clothes, something that would make a statement.
He wasn't ever quite satisfied with the cloak.
When he went to Hogwarts Albus was excited about everything, even the plain black cloak that the school insisted on.
The cloak was nothing special, really. It had the same warming charms sewn into it that most magical cloaks had, and it was much hardier than muggle clothes, but it was black and boring and absolutely the same as everyone else's.
Albus liked it because it was one part of his Hogwarts uniform and he loved Hogwarts more than anywhere else, even (he was ashamed to think) more than the home that was often uncomfortable because of his family secrets and difficulties.
But the cloak was, a link to Hogwarts aside, of no interest to him. He wasn't yet satisfied that he had found his cloak yet.
He thought it was stupid sometimes, to be so determined to find the perfect cloak.
Perhaps it was just the eccentricity that people attributed to him even as a teenager.
But he thought it was because cloaks were always so plain.
When it came to robes even Albus' unusual colour combinations could sometimes be outdone, but with a cloak it was always some simple shade, no embellishment, no personality. When people wore cloaks they didn't want to stand out, they just wanted practicality. They saved any uniqueness for their robes.
But Albus liked to stand out all the time. He was vain in regards to his intelligence but when it came to clothes he just liked to let his personality shine through. He knew some of his outfits made everyone stare in a bad way but he didn't care because they made him happy.
He was determined to find a cloak that truly reflected him, even if it took him a century to do so.
(of course, he never thought it would actually take so long).
When he graduated and met Gellert he wore a red cloak all the time.
It was bold and fitted the excitement he felt at meeting and intellectual and magical equal.
But it was never quite right. Bold it might be but there was only one colour and no patterns.
He was suppressing himself, not wanting Gellert to laugh at his strange outfits.
Changing himself for someone, it wasn't a good thing to do. He thought that sometimes but he continued his friendship and his plans (oh how he would be shamed years later at the thought of those plans) with Gellert and he wore a cloak that was bright but not too unusual.
After Ariana's death he burned that cloak to a crisp. He couldn't look at it without thinking of blood, of his poor, beautiful sister motionless on the floor.
He didn't wear a single bit of red for over a decade.
For almost half a century Albus wore dull cloaks.
He couldn't bring himself to change his wardrobe entirely, mourning though he was for his sister and for what Gellert would go on to do. His robes remained as colourful as ever but his penance was his cloaks.
Grey, black, navy blue and brown. Those were the only colour cloaks he wore. They reflected his grief but not who he truly was.
He wore them until 1945, when his defeat of Gellert gave him mixed feelings of elation and sadness.
He hated every one of those cloaks.
He spent a decade then wearing the most outrageous coloured cloaks. Canary yellow, neon green and bright orange were just some of the options he had.
Some people laughed, but they did so privately. Albus had defeated Gellert Grindelwald after all and they were beyond grateful.
There were awards and titles and he accepted them all looking ridiculous, but the respect he had remained.
He was jovial and cheerful and merry. His cloaks reflected that.
In the end, though, he admitted the truth to himself.
He was trying too hard. Trying too hard to avoid thinking about the defeat and incarceration of a wizard he had once (and still did) care about, avoiding the niggling thoughts in the back of his mind about the disappearance of Tom Riddle from the minds of wizarding society and the whispers of a Lord Voldemort that Albus was sure were connected to Tom.
His cloaks were trying too hard in the same way he was. He was attempting to shock, to show only the sunny and hopeful side of his personality.
He toned it down a bit and the respect he received was even more genuine.
Eventually, Albus found a sort of balance in his cloaks. They were bright but not blinding (usually), patterned but not too insane.
He had to get a new wardrobe just for his cloaks. He was constantly finding new ones that he liked. He even knitted one or two himself.
Minerva despaired over him. She found his robes ridiculous enough but couldn't understand why he would extend that insanity to his cloaks. In the mind of his sensible Deputy Headmistress cloaks were meant to be simple and serviceable, not another platform for Albus to express his enthusiastic personality.
At one point he had over one hundred cloaks. Some he preferred more than others. There were even one or two that were nearly perfect.
But he was never satisfied, not completely. Every cloak was still missing that special something he'd searched for so long.
It was beyond ridiculous that he was so picky about cloaks. But, as he said to Minerva when she was making her yearly complaint about how his cloaks were an eyesore, a man had to have some hobbies – it just so happened that one of his, attempting to find the perfect cloak, was a little more unusual than most.
Minerva only rolled her eyes. He noticed she did that a lot around him.
The Potter's Invisibility Cloak was a small side adventure in his cloak search.
A cloak he had been looking for over decades, one third of the infamous Deathly Hallows.
When he borrowed it from James Potter and held it in his hands he knew that now, with the Elder Wand he had taken from Gellert, he possessed two of the Hallows.
It was magnificent of course. He desired so strongly to try it on.
But he couldn't. The Hallows could lead to dangerous obsession, he knew, and for Albus, already in possession of a Hallow, having two would be a dangerous temptation.
He got the feeling that if he could wear it he might be perfectly satisfied. That it would somehow make it easier to find the third, that he would be master of death and maybe, just maybe, he could see Ariana again, could apologise for what his folly had caused.
But no, it was madness. And Albus thought he was quite mad enough already.
He put the cloak aside, hid it away in his vault until Harry Potter came to Hogwarts and he could return it to its rightful owner.
The Invisibility Cloak was not the cloak for him.
And somewhere, out there, he was sure there was a cloak waiting for him that would finally bring him the satisfaction he had long been waiting for.
He received it for his 115th birthday, from Minerva of all people.
It had been a hard few years. Harry had come to Hogwarts and had, with the help of his friends, faced many trials, joys and sorrows.
And Albus knew the time was drawing near for the final confrontation, knew that Harry was not yet ready but would be soon.
Albus had almost forgotten his search for the perfect cloak. After all, war gave perspective and Albus found it difficult to find time for even short trips that were not focused on the defeat of Voldemort.
The cloak Minerva presented to him was beautiful.
The base colour was a swirling mix of navy blue, black and deep purple, like the night sky. The colours moved and intertwined with silvery clouds and tiny pieces of sparkling gems that looked like stars. There was a section at the bottom where the colours seamlessly morphed into the golds and reds and oranges of a perfect sunset. Some parts seemed like a peaceful night while other areas appeared o be a brewing storm of sorts. Silver thread made intricate patterns around the edges of the cloak and it was fastened by a small silver phoenix that seemed to shine with all the colours of the rainbow.
He'd seen similar cloaks before but they had never looked quite so magnificent. It took something special to enchant clothing in such a way and Albus knew Minerva must have done a lot of the spellwork herself – these things always worked better when there was an emotional connection.
The cloak represented him perfectly. Not the paragon of virtue some sort, nor the master manipulator and liar those like Rita Skeeter sought to portray him as. The cloak showed the powerful wizard who made mistakes and paid for them, who did what was right even when it wasn't easy, who was sad and happy at the same time, who tried his best to rid the world of the evil that was Lord Voldemort. It showed the good and the bad, the man and the myth.
It was the culimation of a search that had gone on for over a century and, even better, it was proof from his dearest friend that she saw who he really was.
The tears he shed that night over his gift were between him and Minerva.
For he had finally found the cloak that made him completely satisfied.
Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed it.