Disclaimer: I in no way own Harry Potter or any of J.K. Rowling's fine characters (believe me, if I owned it, you'd KNOW).

Warnings: angsty, me trying to get into the head of a Wizard older and wiser than I.

200 words in which Dumbledore goes deeper into his motivations for not telling Harry what he should have.

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Lost Boy

Adults often refuse to believe that all children grow up. It is an inevitable fact of life, and, try as we might, we can only shelter them for so long.

Some children grow up early. For them there is no innocence, only the harsh reality of the world against them.

The worst mistake we, as adults, can make, is to try to keep those children in their youth. To refuse them the burdens they must shoulder and try to take those burdens on ourselves.

There is no specific day when childhood passes, but once it is gone, it will always be irretrievable.

Harry has been stripped of his childhood, and for that I blame myself. I thought I was immune to making an old man's senile mistakes, but I was wrong yet again.

I did not tell him how I had wished to ease his responsibility. I told him half truths of danger, of prophecies unfulfilled. I felt that the truth was too sentimental – I care for this boy, and I wished to allow him what fleeting moments he could savor, basking in the remnants of his innocence.

Instead, I inadvertently threw him all the more painfully from Never Land.

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