HP: TSH — Chapter 324 - Extra: Dumbledore 3 (Patreon)

Extra: Dumbledore 3

Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

That was the epitaph Dumbledore had carved with his own hands for his sister Ariana.

Some people saw Albus Dumbledore as a god. But he knew he was human, and humans make mistakes, and carry regrets.

In his youth, Dumbledore climbed the staircase of power without ever once tasting the bitterness of falling short. That lasted until the day he crawled out of his own coffin and was forced to accept that strength was leaving his body, beyond his control.

What set him apart was that Dumbledore felt no panic. There are no free gifts in this world. This was the price that ultimate victory required. He simply observed his body in silence, gauging how far his power had receded.

His strength no longer permitted extravagance. Silent, Wandless Magic, problems dispatched with ease, that was gone. Like any ordinary wizard, he now had to calculate the cost of every spell.

He followed Harry's movements in secret, but could no longer offer counsel. Much less raise his hand to help. He could only watch as Harry and the others stumbled and fell, then stubbornly climbed back up, bearing witness to Harry's growth and his extraordinary courage.

Yes, Dumbledore had at first regarded this as the price. But gradually he understood he had been wrong again. This was not a price. It was a gift destiny had given Albus.

As transcendent power receded from Albus's body like a tide, he began, little by little, to face the world as an ordinary person, feeling the helplessness and the resilience that ordinary people know when confronting hardship, even finding himself protected by children.

In early November, Albus rescued several Muggle-born wizards, undoing the spells that bound them and letting them all escape.

At the time, he had been practicing how to control his reduced magical strength and deal with attacks efficiently. So he volunteered to stay behind and cover the retreat, letting the others run.

After a few exchanges, Dumbledore finished his practice session and was preparing to dispatch the Snatchers all at once. Then hurried footsteps sounded behind him.

"Confringo!"

A spell blasted the Snatchers apart. A hand grabbed Dumbledore and bolted out at full speed.

"Meryl!" Mr. Tonks ran ahead, his soul apparently trailing somewhere behind him. "How are you this fast? I can barely keep up!"

"When it's a rescue you have to be fast — what kind of rescue crawls?" Meryl moved quickly and spoke quickly. "Thank you for saving us. What's your name?"

"It was you who just saved me. I should be thanking you." Dumbledore said with a smile. "Brian Wald."

"You don't need to thank me. I don't save just anyone." Meryl said plainly. "But you saved me, I found my wand, and I still had some strength left — running off without a word would just be ingratitude, wouldn't it? Mr. Wald, if we can't win, we shouldn't force it. Just run. Only the living have a chance."

Mr. Tonks chimed in from alongside them: "Meryl's heart is actually kind. She's looking out for you."

Meryl pursed her lips, seeming displeased with Mr. Tonks's framing, but accepted it all the same.

Albus watched Meryl with a warm smile. How strange and wonderful, an ordinary student who hadn't even graduated, charging out to protect Dumbledore, lecturing him to run when he couldn't win.

At the end of his life, Dumbledore descended the staircase of power, gradually becoming the Albus he had been at the very beginning. In the process of losing his strength, he slowly began to see scenery he had never noticed before, and to feel things he had never felt before.

Aberforth seemed to have complicated feelings about Albus's change.

At first he hadn't noticed anything wrong with Albus, assumed at most he'd taken some injuries. It was only later, when Albus's condition could no longer be concealed, that Aberforth discovered with shock and fury that his brother was no longer that genius of extraordinary power. He was a "person" now. Like Aberforth himself. Someone who aged and grew weak.

Albus had no idea what strange thoughts Aberforth had been turning over. He was startled to find that this brother who hated him so fiercely had actually come to him and asked, with some stiffness: "Hey. Can your situation even be treated?"

Albus looked at him steadily, and shook his head with a smile. "Aberforth, I cannot have everything."

Just as he'd had no way, back then, to both stay by Ariana's side and build something great.

This was a price. A punishment. But it was also the best possible gift for him in his old age.

The accusations Aberforth had spent a lifetime hurling, and the fire he scattered everywhere, all of it fell suddenly flat in that moment, leaving behind a disoriented blankness. Like an Auror who had spent decades chasing an enemy and was suddenly forced to retire.

What Aberforth hated was the brilliant brother who had neglected his family for the sake of ambition. The radiant Albus Dumbledore. But Albus was no longer that all-powerful, ends-justify-the-means Albus. He had stepped down from the pedestal of his own accord and calmly accepted his losses.

The rage and hatred inside Aberforth could not be talked away or erased by any clever words. But the cruelty of reality was another matter.

He sat in front of Ariana's portrait, absently polishing the grimy glass in his hand, murmuring to himself: "He... he looks terrible, Anna."

"Is this really what I wanted?"

"I feel so strange. Not happy at all."

A deep, bone-deep exhaustion welled up inside Aberforth. He had hated Albus his entire life, accusations, curses, fists, kicks, every method available, only to find, at the very end, that he had stepped on empty air. He didn't know who he was supposed to hate anymore.

The Ariana in the portrait had no answer for him. She only smiled, gently and silently. In that eternal silence, the only voice Aberforth could hear was the one inside his own chest.

On Christmas Eve, when a weakened Dumbledore collapsed in the Hog's Head, Aberforth answered with action. The moment Praeris called out, he sprinted upstairs to fetch the medical kit without pausing for a single second.

Praeris administered the treatment. Aberforth could only stand to one side, muttering curses and sharp remarks, until he suddenly met Albus's calm, gentle eyes.

He realized it.

He had already forgiven him.

That damned fool, of all the times to finally think clearly, it had to be now.

Fine. Last time he hadn't been able to take care of Ariana properly. This time he couldn't possibly... Aberforth stood among the defenders of Hogwarts and watched in a daze as his brother fell. Like a bird struck by an arrow, tumbling gracefully down.

Everyone was crying. Everyone. But Aberforth did not cry. He had thought that from that moment forward he would stop hating Albus.

He didn't. He hated Albus to death.

In this life, Aberforth had been losing people all along. First his father, then his mother, then Anna. But those were all accidents. Only Albus, only he had chosen to die.

Hermione and Ron came over to offer comfort. Aberforth only laughed, cold and short. "Who would grieve for that shameless bastard?"

"That's your brother!" Ron was stunned, unable to understand it at all. If something had happened to his own brother, his heart would have shattered.

"Precisely because it's Albus!" Aberforth erupted like a volcano, the veins in his forehead jumping. "He did it again! For that damned 'greater good'! For more people! Does he have no heart at all!"

"He kept it from me. He was calculating the whole time, and even I was a piece of his plan! I hate him so much! What gives him the right! What gives him the right to just walk away — leaving me behind in a world where I have nothing!"

What gives you the right. What gives you the right to wait until I'd forgiven you, and then abandon me again. If I hadn't forgiven you, I wouldn't feel so... so wretched...

Aberforth poured all of it into the ensuing brawl with the Death Eaters, wishing he could rip the head off every last dark wizard and kick it around like a football.

...

Voldemort was dead. It was all over.

Aberforth sat on the ground beside Theseus. Theseus was nuzzling the little dragon's head, delivering his usual brand of enthusiastic encouragement: "Good job, good job — our Buxu did so wonderfully today!"

Buxu seemed a little dejected. He bumped his head against Aberforth instead.

"Kid, you've got the wrong person," Aberforth said in his usual gruff tone. "Not all white beards are the same."

"You've got the right one." Theseus sighed. "He smelled the scent you share with Dumbledore. He's trying to comfort you."

Aberforth rolled his eyes. "Which is exactly why I say it's a child — doesn't understand a thing."

Harry came walking over from a distance.

"You're here to comfort me too?" Aberforth was baffled. "Go sit with that little dragon."

"Dumbledore is alive," Harry said.

Albus was alive. But it was barely better than dead. He watched his once-radiant brother lying in St. Mungo's like a forgotten statue. That was more frightening than any gravestone.

Aberforth hated him even more.

He hated the way Albus lay there half-alive and half-dead, which reminded him of the helplessness he'd felt during his sister's episodes. He hated this hopeless hope, which left him unable to mourn and unable to move on. He hated that he still cared, because if he didn't care, he wouldn't be suffering.

He hated that Albus had died. He hated even more that Albus hadn't died.

He damned well hated that damned Albus.

The door of the Hog's Head swung open.

Aberforth turned from the bar, ready to drive out whatever customer had walked in with his usual rudeness, and found himself looking into a pair of familiar blue eyes.

Albus Dumbledore. His brother. Not wearing those glittering, showy robes. Just an ill-fitting traveling cloak, borrowed from somewhere, standing at the door of his pub. He looked aged and frail. But he was standing right there, solid and real.

A long, suffocating silence.

Albus glanced down at his own clothes and smiled. "I was in too much of a hurry. Borrowed it from young Sirius."

After eating his first meal since waking up at Harry's house, he had come straight here.

Aberforth squeezed a taunt out from between his teeth. "In such a hurry, were you — rushing off to..."

His voice trembled. He swallowed the word "die" before it could escape. He had spent his whole life swearing at people without caring about dates or omens. And now he couldn't bring himself to say "die."

"Hurrying to tell you I'm back," Albus said.

Aberforth truly hated Albus.

Hated how easily Albus made him stop hating him.

He wrenched himself around, his whole body rigid, squeezing the rag hard and scrubbing the counter with rough, furious strokes. "What are you standing there for! Waiting for me to invite you in?!"

Harry and Praeris stood on the street outside. Harry was genuinely happy for Dumbledore. "He went in!"

"It would be strange if he didn't," Praeris said calmly.

Harry couldn't understand it. "But Ron said that after Dumbledore fell, Aberforth wasn't sad at all, even cursed him out."

"Not everyone expresses grief by shedding tears." Praeris spoke in the tone of someone who had seen through everything. "When a person loves so painfully, all they can do is convince themselves it's hatred."

Harry thought of the stories about Dumbledore's past that Rita Skeeter had once brought up. He seemed to understand something.

In the end, the ones who walked out of the Hog's Head were two Dumbledores, Albus and Aberforth. Aberforth had temporarily closed the pub. His expression was, for once, not quite as sour as usual.

Albus brought his brother, Harry, and Praeris on a journey to Godric's Hollow. It had once been his home. Harry's home, too.

"Why bring me along?" Praeris looked thoroughly unenthused.

Albus gave a playful wink. "Shouldn't a doctor keep watch over her patient wandering around unsupervised?"

"Keep talking nonsense and the doctor will have you sent back to St. Mungo's to lie down."

Albus smiled, calm and unhurried. "The future belongs to you all, doesn't it?"

This war had shown Dumbledore that uniting Slytherin was not impossible. A good number of Slytherins had stayed for the final battle, at the very least, and Praeris was the invisible leader of Slytherin's younger generation.

"Horace is going to retire." Albus's tone was gentle. "There are many possibilities for Slytherin's future. What do you think?"

Since Dumbledore's awakening, Praeris had already been named the youngest Potions Master by the Daily Prophet, qualified to be appointed Potions professor by exception, and serving as Head of House wouldn't be out of the question either.

"Give it up," Praeris said evenly.

"The Hospital Wing now has two healers." Albus had anticipated her refusal. "At St. Mungo's, you would be supervised by the Committee for Experimental Potions Oversight. At Hogwarts, you would not."

Praeris raised an eyebrow and looked at Dumbledore.

"You already have sufficient influence now," Dumbledore said with a warm smile. "Potions Master, Wizengamot member, and a wide network of allies, enough to shape trial outcomes and Ministry decisions."

Indeed, if Praeris had need of it, she could genuinely influence the Ministry, the Wizengamot, and the Daily Prophet. That was also why she had been confident she could offer Harry meaningful support in his hour of need.

"But is that enough?" Dumbledore asked quietly. "Influencing allies means you will always need to deal, compromise, and pay a price. Return to Hogwarts, though, and the position of Head of House would be yours without question. And when this generation of officials turns over, your influence within Slytherin will not turn over with them."

Slytherin children typically remain Slytherin. As long as there are descendants, Slytherins will still need a Slytherin Head of House.

"We'll see," Praeris said, neither warm nor cold.

Dumbledore continued: "Your approach of working alongside Severus was quite good. I intend to propose to Minerva that senior students be selected as teaching assistants for each Head of House. What do you think?"

"You really have recovered quite a bit," Praeris said. "Truly, it's all my fault."

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