Dumbledore in the Summer
It was, Albus Dumbledore reflected, a poor day indeed when there was nothing to be done but wonder about what one should be doing. During the summer months at Hogwarts, he was always hit with this curious and unsettling feeling; that his time, such that it was, could be spent doing something. Of course, that something was always shifting forms. When he decided that he should attack his great pile of correspondences, it occurred to him that gardening was just the thing he should be doing right at that moment. As his crocuses began to have their thirst quenched, suddenly newspaper reading became his core obsession.
Suffice to say that a Dumbledore without a school to run was a bored one. And that could always lead to trouble.
Eventually he would give in, take his leave of the wandering halls of Hogwarts and meander through Europe for a time, reminiscing on past occasions both painful and wonderful. As Chief Mugwump, he often traveled the world as his younger self had once desired, righting wrongs and saving lives. Always however he would find himself back at his own front door again. Opening the door revealed a life not-yet fully abandoned, a reminder of what he once had and had lost because of his weaknesses. There was his mother's old rocking chair, to which he had first learned to walk towards. There was the pebble on which he had first performed magic. A trail of dusty memories littered the mantelpiece and surfaces, engulfing him in a nostalgia thick enough to cause a constriction in his throat.
The cellar had never been opened since.
But it was summer, and the sunshine outside warmed Dumbledore considerably all the way through to his old bones. The parks were full of families enjoying themselves immensely, and Fawkes enjoyed an occasional and stealthily given ice cream as man and companion sat on a park bench. He, Fawkes that is, had been both a mentor, a friend and a comforter for the headmaster in his worst moments, quite like Dumbledore himself was to certain students of his school.
However, the phoenix himself was capable of making the professor melancholy, for whilst he had grown old and crumpled through the years, the bird never tired, never dimmed, never once lost the lustre he had possessed on the day of their first meeting...at least, most of the time. Dumbledore had grown to dread the moments when Fawkes grew old and withered, the bitter reflection of his own situation, and he also twinged with a touch of jealousy at his friend's rebirth and renewal. Shame came to him too at his anger over the facts of life and death, then reflection on his past gave way to a future of uncertainties. How long did he have left? Did he have enough time to end Voldemort forever? What...what did dying feel like?
He knew, or he thought he knew the answer to that last question. He had been in that situation once, one ago. With Grindlewald in chains and his soul crushed under the magnitude of guilt and pain he had both inflicted and allowed to happen to innocent people, Dumbledore had collapsed, defeated in triumph. As he lay dying, Fawkes came to him for the first time, whistling away at his merry tune whilst alighting on Albus' shoulder and healing all his wounds. As the hours turned into days, the Phoenix remained by him, soothing his mind and body back into its normal vigorous self. And with the loss of his partner of the soul, Dumbledore found another.
So went the summer, as did many others since that fateful day. The old man rarely lingered anywhere, constantly on the move towards the next thing he wished to explore. Whilst school came in and out with a regular rhythmic pace, the headmaster continued to flow through life in his own special way. Hogwarts had replaced his old life; the people within became his reason to be. After all, where his family lived, his heart lived also.