The Truth

The Truth

The headline was three inches high and blinked. It blinked. Trust the Daily Prophet to turn his passing into something garish and ultimately surreal. He sighed; it was surreal long before the Prophet's layout department got hold of it.

"The Greatest Wizard in the World is Dead!" the headline screamed. Below it, spanning most of the rest of the page, a photograph, several years old, showed a bespectacled, messy-haired teenager with a sheepish expression valiantly trying to hide behind the frame of the photo from the millions of eyes that were no doubt staring down upon him at that very moment. Even he couldn't help but stare at it.

The article, continued on pages two, five, and nine was, of course, misinformed in every way possible, but one didn't read the Prophet for Truth so much as for a good idea of what the truth is not. Truth does not need three inch high letters. Truth does not blink.

Truth is the body of a boy, not yet eighteen years old, lying even now in a plain wooden box deep in the heart of the Ministry of Magic, waiting for the hero's funeral that should never have been his. Truth is that he will never enjoy the freedom he gave to so many, will never kiss a bride, will never have sons of his own. Truth is that such things happen. It is the selfless act that he never would have condoned, that even now -- heart breaking, mind numb -- he could not fail to admire.

"I still don't understand why," he said softly. The rage had died from his voice, replaced by a deep sadness that Albus Dumbledore could not fail to hear, could not turn neutrally away from. It was a sadness with which he was intimately acquainted. He had known this boy -- this man sitting before him far too long not to know when he was hurting. Albus wondered when he'd begun to think of him as a man and not a child in his care; perhaps it had been marked by his leaving school, perhaps before....

"It was his idea," Albus replied slowly, choosing his words very carefully so as not to tread on memory or aggravate the wounds so freshly wrought. "It was his choice." No amount of care could take away the sting, he realized. Every word burned like brands on raw nerve.

"And you allowed it." It was not a question. His voice was dull, and Albus found himself fighting down the sour taste of panic at the sound. It was the sound of defeat.

"You allowed it, and you didn't tell me about it."

"Yes," Albus replied, voice steady. "I allowed it." He would not let this death be in vain. He would not add another face to the ever growing gallery of failures that stretched out in his mind whenever he shut his eyes. The faces were too many already. Too many by far.

"He wasn't ready!" the man cried, bursting from his seat as though launched by some unseen pressure. He began to pace again as he had been doing for the last hour. "You knew he wasn't ready! And yet you allowed it!"

"No, he was not," Albus replied wearily, aware of the grief seeping in around the edges of his resolve. He pushed at it idly with his mind, but knew it was as futile as trying to plug a hole in a bag of sand.

"A lamb to the slaughter," the man mumbled, running a hand through his hair in a gesture of distraction. "It wasn't even murder. It was suicide."

"It was his idea," Albus replied, realizing that he was repeating himself. Never a good sign.

"I still don't understand why," he echoed petulantly as he paced, hands jammed deep into the pockets of his trousers, his outer robes flung open carelessly and flapping as he marched.

Albus sighed. "You know why," he said, trying to keep the bitterness from his tone.

He shot Albus a deadly look then, pausing his relentless gait. "Of course I know!" he hissed. "And I hate it! I hate knowing."

He stomped back over to his chair again, body collapsing under the intense strain of grief, of guilt, of hatred. Albus accepted that much of it was directed at him; that was as it should be... for now. He welcomed it -- if only to dull the ache of his own heart.

"Merlin," the man moaned, pressing his hands to his face. "What am I going to say to Ron and Hermione? Or Ginny? What the hell am I going to say to Ginny?" He stayed like that for several moments, leaning heavily on the ancient desk that divided the space between them.

"You won't have to say anything," Albus said quietly. "You won't be seeing them until... until it is over."

His head snapped up, eyes keen and sharp and accusing. "I'm to hide then? He goes off to fight and I'm meant to hide and wait like a snake in its hole?" He didn't wait for Albus to respond. He was out of his chair again, tracing the five steps it took him to cross from one side of the office to the other. Albus had counted. The man had a long stride.

"I've spent half my life hiding!" he roared, kicking a bookshelf angrily. "Hiding from myself, hiding from other people. I hide and he runs off into battle. He does the dirty work. He gets killed."

Albus watched the shoulders droop, the head bow under the weight of the Truth. The pendulum swung back and forth between the extremes of anger and grief.

"He hurt him, you know," he said at last, and Albus' breath caught in his throat.

"He hurt Voldemort. Cursed him and hurt him. I saw it. There was nothing I could do, of course," he said vehemently, throwing another angry glance Albus' way, "but I saw it." His words no longer stank of defeat. They rang with pride.

"You taught him well," Albus said, prodding him with words.

"Don't," the man replied angrily. "Don't lay this at my feet." He kicked the bookshelf again halfheartedly this time. "Damned prophecy," he muttered. "What magic turns smoke and tealeaves to such death and destruction?"

He wandered restlessly back towards the chair, but did not sit. Instead, he rested his hands on the back of it, clinging to the wood and leather for support.

"He was amazing," he said softly, shaking his head. "I could never be ...." His eyes glazed slightly as they focused on some unseen distance, some shadow of the past. Only a few hours past, but hours that stretched like decades between then and now.

"The building we were in was collapsing under the curses; walls were falling, ceiling caving in. For a while they had us cornered, outnumbered three to one. Demetria set off some new spell of hers, and it rattled the building in the process. A beam fell and pinned me. Kingsley shouted that we were driving them back, and then there he was, standing over me like a ghost. I thought maybe I had passed out, or that maybe I was going crazy. And he just looked at me and said, 'Don't blame yourself. This is how it has to be.'"

He sat down in the chair at last. His expression was weary, but the pride was still there. It gave Albus hope, and hope, he had learned long ago, was a precious commodity.

"I could see, through a big hole in one of the walls. I could see him. Death Eaters all around, and everyone was screaming at him to stop. Bellatrix tried to curse him and he blew her away. Just like that. She was no match for him.

"Demetria's spell did its work. The Death Eaters were breaking ranks, and they were all so surprised to see him, he just ran straight through them, right up to him. To Voldemort. I've never seen such courage."

Albus sighed. "He asked me once if the Sorting Hat had made a mistake. He didn't think he belonged in Gryffindor."

The man shook his head, and the tiniest of smiles teased the corners of his lips. Albus' heart began to beat faster with the small triumph.

"He would think that," the man said fondly. "But the rest of us knew, right from the very beginning. He was where he belonged." He took a deep shuddering breath, remembering.

"You got me out, I suppose," he added at last.

Albus nodded, mutely.

"Why?"

"You know why."

"Because of the damned prophecy."

Albus did not nod. He did not need to.

"Voldemort has taken everyone," the man said, his voice dipping down into a lower register, "and all because of a prophecy. Lily, James, Sirius, Hagrid, Tonks, and now..." His voice broke on the name he could not yet speak. He swallowed hard, fighting to retain his control.

"But I know something he doesn't."

The man looked up across the desk at Albus and looked him in the eye for the first time. His green eyes blazed and Albus finally saw what he was looking for; it was anger, yes, and grief, and pain indescribable, but it was focused, it was sharp, it was sure.

"The prophecy said he would mark one of us as his equal. He chose me because he thought I was stronger."

His fist clenched on the arm of the chair.

"He chose the wrong one."

Albus did not break his gaze, but his heart lifted and he felt as though he could breathe again. Neville's death would not be in vain. He would give Harry the courage to fight.

Harry took off his glasses and rubbed his tired eyes. They were dry, not from lack of anguish, but from having already shed more tears than anyone should have to. "Will the Glamour still be on him for the funeral?"

"Everyone thinks he is you," Albus replied. "He gave his life that Voldemort should believe he had defeated you. We must see it through to the end."

Harry stared at his hands. "He should be himself when they bury him," he said at last, hoarsely. "Will you see to it?"

"Of course."

"And if I don't make it through the next..." Albus stared at him, hard. "Just make sure the marker gets changed around properly," Harry spoke slowly. "I want everyone to know who he was and what he did."

"You can see to that yourself, when it's done," Albus chided softly.

They were silent for a long moment. Albus listened to the sound of his own breathing, his heart thudding in his ears, the soft clicks and whirrs of his instruments scattered about his office. He found himself wishing, certainly not for the first time, that he had the power to take away Harry's pain, to somehow make it all go away. An old man's futile wish.

He had tried, for a time, to keep the Truth from Harry; if only he had known how much more damage he could do by withholding it. At first it had been easy. The innocent boy who had appeared that first September night on the steps of Hogwarts believed himself to be ordinary, unimportant, and small. Quickly, however, his keen mind hand begun winnowing out little slivers of the Truth until finally, after much hardship and much pain, Albus had laid it out before him in its entirety, a shining gem of hard, cold, painful Truth.

Harry suddenly reached across the desk for the newspaper. He held it up and stared at it for a long moment.

"'The Greatest Wizard in the World...'" he muttered. He tossed the paper back down onto the desk as he stood. "At least they got the headline right."

He turned his back on Albus and made his way to the door of the Headmaster's office. As his hand reached out for the knob, he paused.

"You knew," he said softly. "You knew the Truth."

"What truth is that?"

"You knew it was the only way, and you knew I would never agree to it." Albus did not answer.

"I'll never forgive you for it," Harry whispered sadly. He wrenched the door open and strode out of the office.

"I know," Albus replied.