Betrayed

Albus Dumbledore


Dumbledore took a lemon drop from the bowl on his desk with shaking hands. Feeling relieved he unwrapped it and popped it into his mouth, enjoying the brief respite that simple act caused him.

He once more checked his wards and making sure to put up a privacy barrier he let himself relax at last. Feeling comforted he let the glamour he had been using to hide the paleness of his face and the deep rings under his eyes fall. He wasn’t about to show it, but those dreams were driving him mad. It wasn’t that he felt guilty –he had only done what had to be done, even if Harry couldn’t understand that- but it had been weeks since he last managed a restful night of sleep. Every time he closed his eyes the young wizard’s accusing face came to him, as if summoned, and dedicated his time to recriminate him during long, interminable hours. And so he woke, as tired as he had been when we went to sleep, or even more exhausted.
He could not let the others know of his weakness, and that forced him to cast glamour upon glamour, which was slowly mining his energy. Between one thing and the other, he was on the verge of collapse.

With a tired sigh he pinched his nose, wishing the weariness which pounded on his temples, giving him a terrible headache, would just disappear.
Him being none the wiser, his eyelids, which had been turning heavier with each breath he took, slided shut, and little by little he was drawn into Morfeu’s arms...

Harry, as had become usual, was sitting on a rock on the floor. At his side was his sofa, an accurate replica of the one sitting on Albu’s study, and beside it a small coffee table with the trademark tea set and a red bowl full of lemon drops.
Around them the fog seemed alive, curling over the bleak landscape, like a monster of enormous proportions ready to strike, drawing shapes over the few blackened trees still standing and giving them, if possible, an even more phantasmagorical appearance.
Immediately he felt the cold creeping up his feet to find its home in his chest, from where it would spread to the rest of the body, chilling him to the bone.
This time, Harry wasn’t even looping at him. His vacant gaze was lost in the horizon, watching with eyes unseeing the foggy spirals while his mouth, almost mechanically, formed the words with which his... dream always started.
‘You were one of the worst. You not only left me to defend myself, after having manipulated me all this years, after using me as your precious weapon, carelessly playing with my life and feelings in a complicated web I only now begin to unravel; you even dared testify against me. Said that I was turning into a Dark Wizard, powerful, unstable, dangerous! After all, I was just following the path you had drawn for me.’ The words, which had started as a murmur, little by little rose in volume, until Dumbledore had to consciously stop himself from covering his ears.
‘Did you have fun watching as the Dursleys scorned me? Did you unwrap one of your beloved lemon pops while you formulated just the best way to control me? To make me love you as a benevolent grandfather?’ He growled, this time with true rage, twisting the words until the come out in some kind of guttural howl.
His voice quietened again, and he once more spoke dispassionately, in the cold, impersonal tone he had started with.
‘So many lies…I guess in the end, that’s what it boils down to, right? Little pieces in your chessboard, with no more importance than the role played in your next move. And that muddled excuse of the Greater Good. Unfortunate hopes to draw a complex tapestry with the threads you on your own unraveled from our lives. Do you truly think that, once you step back and watch this whole mess from another perspective, as if by work of magic, there will appear another image, greater, perfect, in which this will all fit seamlessly?’ He asked, hatefully hurling his words at the Headmaster, mocking him. ‘Your tapestry is woven in chaos, in pain and fear, in lies. It is swiftly unraveling under your watchful eyes, and there is nothing you can do to stop it.’
Dumbledore barely managed to hold back a shiver as the space around them shifted, mirroring the feelings and emotions the young man was describing so chillingly.
‘And the thing that infuriates me most is your holier-than-thou attitude, your whole “you disappoint me, Harry, you should be ashamed”. “Search for the right path, try to redeem yourself, I forgive you”. Do you think I will ever forgive you? You clearly underestimate the legacy I get from Voldemort.’ Dumbledore chocked on his tea, which in a brave attempt to feign normality he had started sipping. ‘Oh, yes, I know everything about your little precious secret; I’m Tom Riddle’s freaking grandson, yadayadayada. Maybe I should have seen him as a grandfatherly figure instead, huh? But no, for some stupid reason I did as my Gryffindor side demanded... I should have listened to the side of me the hat wanted to place in Slytherin, think about my own gain, look out for myself, don’t let anyone use me, be the manipulator and not the manipulated. For some stupid standard of Gryffindor suicidal courage I decided to be the freaking Saviour of the Wizarding World. I spent months training, exhausted till I could move no more, brushing death more than once. I was at last ready to confront the bastard who killed my parents, and you, idiotic, moronic useless bureaucrats of the Ministry of Magic put me under arrest and condemned me. You took me to a slow, painful, certain death when this all could have been avoided by just three tiny drops of veritaserum.’
‘And now you want me to save you? Not a snowball’s chance in hell. I will have my revenge, and I will die, and I will leave you to this war, my blood tainting your hands, an innocent man condemned by his friends, by his mentors and family.’
He stood silent for a couple of minutes, enjoying the burdened look, however slight, that now adorned Dumbledore’s features.
‘Honestly, I miss the school. Back in Hogwarts, if you were ever back stabbed, you knew it had been the work of a Slytherin. Now, well, those most likely to stab you in the back are those who swore to fight by your side.

With a flowing gesture of his hand the fog surrounding them slowly lifted, and they were able to see the deep precipice running just a couple of meters to their right. In the field below them a vicious fight was taking place, bathed in blood, screams of pain the only sound reaching their ears.
‘Look at your work, Dumbledore. Observe the world you have created all on your own. You have destroyed the Wizardin’s World last hope of salvation; putrefaction will take over and we will all rot, and not even our corrupted bones will be left to cry over; everything will be devastated down to its very foundations. Contemplate your masterpiece, Headmaster. Why don’t you take a lemon drop? The wait won’t be long…’