“Albus! Albus!”
The children surrounding a small, red-haired boy part like a flock of geese in front of Kendra Dumbledore’s wrath. The pinched look on her face was enough to signal to her son she was not pleased, but the way her fingers dug in his bicep as he was dragged towards their house all but confirmed it. He cringes internally, bracing for the worst.
Once Albus was sat on a rickety chair in their kitchen, she whirls around, bending to look him in the eye properly. A few wisps of hair had escaped the austere bun in which she kept it, floating around her face like storm clouds gathering on the horizon.
“What did I say,” his mother enunciates with clipped precision, “about playing with the rabble?”
Albus’ eyes instinctively lower to his hands, clasped tightly in his lap.
“Not to do it, Mother,” he whispers.
“Indeed,” Kendra grips her young son’s chin, pulling his blue gaze up to meet her dark one. Her fingertips burn on his skin, and he has to blink away the haze of tears. “We are not like them. Remember that next time.”
Were he older – wiser – he would know not to ask the question burning on the tip of his tongue. But he is not. Not yet.
“Why, Mother?”
His mother grips tighter, getting close enough that he can see the specks of gold in her dark irises. “Have you forgotten,” she snarls, “what they did to her? What happened to your father? We are not like them. We are wix. They fear what they cannot fathom and I will not lose another child to their fear.” She lets him go, and tears now spill down Albus’ cheeks in hot tracks.
He never plays with the Muggle children again.
Albus chafes at the yoke of responsibility set on him a long time ago. He knows others might think his predicament romantic, even noble: the older brother as a stalwart guardian of his sibling (do not talk about Ariana), even in the face of their mother’s tragic death. He does not weep as they lower her into the ground, nor does he comfort Abeforth’s sniveling form at the edge of the grave while a few wixen lift the earth to cover the shell of the woman who birthed him.
Their gazes burn holes into his back as he silently leads his younger brother to the now empty except for herhome. He cannot shake the sinking feeling that this is not his purpose.
The sun paints Gellert in angelic hues as he lounges in the grass of the Dumbledores’ back yard, book splayed open on his legs. He looks up, a pensive smile flitting on his lips. It strikes Albus that he would happily spend the rest of his life drowning into the icy depths of those eyes, always sparkling with the glimmer of a brilliant idea or other.
Ever since this blond angel has waltzed in, his stale life felt as if it had abruptly gained meaning and color. So when Gellert murmurs his plans to subdue the Muggles under the heel of wizardkind into Albus’ ear, his only thought was this is what I was made for. This is the way the world should be.
It was, after all, for the greater good. Their cause was just.
It has to be, for it to be worth fighting murdering your own kin for.
Years later, Albus Dumbledore barely manages to get to the confines of his office before he collapses in a boneless heap, weeping for blue eyes, blonde hair gilded by afternoon sun and the surety of youth he had locked up deep under the cold stones of Nurmengard.
In the years that follow, Albus abhors anything that reminds him of his Gellert Grindelwald. Dark magic is seductive, he knows too well now. He will not fall for the siren song of its power, as much as his wand occasionally itches for the curses they used to practice. He throws himself into protecting the Muggles, educating the next generation of wixen to burn the Dark away with as much Light as he can instill in them.
Some resist, clinging as shadows in the face of blinding dawn. Holding on to dying traditions and rituals that turn his stomach because they practiced them together. He digs his heels in tighter, bringing all the might of his reputation and power to root them out, to prevent them from tainting any more people with the poison of their bigotry.
When a small boy, unbowed by the squalor of the Muggle orphanage they meet in, does not bend in front of his Light, Albus doesn’t even realize he tars him with the same brush of Dark, evil, impure he tars all the others with. He does not look beyond the snake language and the evils of necessity to see the lost soul in front of him, so sure of his convictions and of his righteousness.
Albus Dumbledore never lets himself wonder what if when the orphan ascends as if to spite him, and finally tries to burn the village that shunned him just to feel the warmth he was never shown.
Even faced with the shrouded bodies of those who fought for him, Albus never falters. They will not lower themselves to use their enemies’ tactics. They meet deadly curses with shields and stunners, and die one after the other at his command.
“So many children, lost, and for what? For what, Albus? How long should we fight for your lofty ideals? How many more need to die?”
“It is all for the greater good, Abeforth. You must understand-”
He is less headmaster, more general these days, orchestrating troops on a giant chessboard. The game does not go in his favor, the enemy is winning. He cannot – will not – let the Darkness win, no matter how many he has to sacrifice. Their cause is as pure as the Light it represents, and to see it tainted by Voldemort’s darkness would be… unbearable.
So he orchestrates an interview. Tempts a naïve, lost soul into delivering his enemy his own undoing. He does not weep, for it is necessary. He enshrines the Potter’s sacrifice on the highest pedestal, exalting the purity of their love for their now orphaned son even as he knowingly leaves said son to his fate with his relatives. He tells himself he imagined Lily’s Avada Kedavra gaze drilling a hole in the back of his robes as he turns his back on little Harry, left on a doorstep in the freezing November night.
Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore dies as sure of his purpose as he was during his life. While his body cools, and the children he molded into weapons weep, he finds himself in an empty hall that reminds him of Hogwarts, yet different. He can barely tell where it ends or even if it ends, its far edges shrouded in mist.
He had always expounded on the fact that when his time comes, he will greet Death like an old friend, regardless of his pursuit of the Hallows. After all, he only intended to use them to cleanse their world of Darkness, not to live forever. As such, to say that he is surprised would be an understatement when he turns and finds himself face to face with Lily Potter, whose waxen face is set into a stony scowl.
He opens his mouth to greet her, to thank her for her sacrifice, to tell her –
“Albus Dumbledore,” she speaks, every word like the toll of a funeral bell echoing in the cavernous hall. Her green gaze shifts to Ariana’s blue, flame-licked hair gleaming gold as fresh straw, and then shifts to the faces of all the pawns he has sacrificed in his long, long life. “I have waited eons to make you pay for what you’ve done for the greater good.”