Author note: The poem that frames this sketch is an excerpt from "In Memoriam, A.H.H.," by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Bells
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light,
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
When the Muggle church bells start tolling from the microscopic village in this (by Muggles) almost uninhabited quarter of Scotland, he climbs on a chair and leans out the casemented window, drinking in the cold night air and the endless sky.
He thinks, what was her name, and he thinks her name was Clara. A sweet Victorian name for a sweet Victorian Muggle-born witch who loved poetry and read Tennyson aloud to the Ravenclaw common room before she married someone tall, someone who was going to be a tall good-looking Healer and not a short slant-eyed Charms professor.
He wonders, is it better to marry and have a spouse and a home and children, and see your children grow up and disappoint you, see your home topple and your wife or husband die, or is it better to be an immutable bachelor professor, married to a discipline that will never leave you, in a castle that will always stand, raising children who grow up and go forth in the world before they disappoint you, always to be succeeded by more children? He wonders, is it better to be a Muggle and die when you reach four score, or is it better to be a wizard, and labor on through decades more, another lifetime almost, of loneliness and pain and grief? There is no Muggle in all of Britain who has reached the age he's reached, and only a handful of wizards, every one of whom he knows personally.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
He always had a good ear for music, a good memory and perfect pitch, gifts largely wasted in Britain's cheerfully Philistine wizarding community. He thinks now it's a blessing that all those British purebloods had all the musical sense bred out of them, and it's only the odd wizard here or there, part-Muggle or part-goblin, who bears the aching burden of an emotional response to poetry and music. He thinks back over a century-odd of wanting and caring and even, now and then, a little sinning, and he has no wish for a fuller minstrel. Nor, at this age, for a fuller life.
He's an old man now and he remembers, as old men do remember, other wars. The First War, as the youngsters call it; ere that, the Grindelwald War; ere that, the Muggle wars. He was never a soldier, not even when he was young. He was never a soldier, not even in the Order of the Phoenix, for though they asked him, he loved Charms too much, he loved Ravenclaw too much, and he was loath to put them second, no matter how dark the signs. So he soldiered on at Hogwarts, with good-natured Pomona, and brilliantly obnoxious young Severus—a very unhappy young man, he always thought, as a student and now as a master—and stout-hearted Minerva, who thought everyone should make the same choices she had made. He soldiered on at Hogwarts, and Albus looked at him, he thought sometimes, with just a trace of envy.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Even wizards don't live a thousand years. They're not supposed to, and he wouldn't if he could. But even if he did, he knows he would never see a thousand years of peace. He knows that when Voldemort falls—he's not entertaining any other possibility—when Voldemort falls, a new Dark Lord will rise, driven by a narrowing lust of gold if not by a misguided selfish vision of immortality, and the battle will go on. As there have been wars before, so there will be future wars. He knows that Albus, who is one of the few wizards in Britain who is older than he, one of the few who is wiser than he, one he loves more than almost anyone, knows this too, and when Albus sacrifices himself—for he sees, with greater clarity as the terms go by, no other possibility—when Albus sacrifices himself, it will be to save Harry or another youngster, it will be to bring down Voldemort, it will be to prove that there are fates worse than death, but it will not be to bring a thousand years of peace.
No matter how lovely the lines blown back on the wind, no matter how stirring the memories blown back on the melodies, there will not be, there will never be, a thousand years of peace.
The short sharp beats of silence amid the tolling of the bells are the only peace he'll ever know, at least till he's claimed by the mysteries beyond the veil. And so at last, as the final chords fade over the chilly horizon, he shuts the window on the flying clouds and the frosty light and goes to find Albus and Minerva and be, for one evening, not alone.