Post by esoterica1693 on Oct 21, 2007 4:01:05 GMT -5
A/N:
Pehaps the first "gay Albus"-compliant ADMM fan- fic here?
Acceptable for anyone who is old enough to know what "gay" is and what "attraction" is. Sexual activity alluded to but not described.
One-shot, posted in three parts for length.
Part 2 edited which pushed it into 3 posts--a baby plot bunny attacked me just after I went to bed. Inspired by one of my favorite lines in the movie version of OoTP: "You have to admit he's got style."
- - - - - - - - -
Harry sat in one of the armchairs in the study adjacent to the Headmistress’s office, sipping a cup of the strong tea McGonagall had served them both. It banished the last of the chill that the blustery early December winds had given him as he trudged up from the school gates, cutting through even his thick Auror robes. The chair, covered in a subtle tartan fabric, was not nearly as overstuffed as those Dumbledore had used. Harry could see a few boxes stacked neatly in the back of the room.
McGonagall had been re-appointed Headmistress after the final defeat of Voldemort, and had presided over Hogwarts’ physical and academic reconstruction. Now, a decade later, the school had regained and even surpassed the excellence it had been known for in Dumbledore’s time. McGonagall had given notice to the Board of Governors that she intended to retire on the 50th anniversary of her date of hire, and in keeping with her strictly organized personality she was clearly already beginning to sort through the items in her office and quarters. He wasn't sure why she had requested a meeting with him, but it was nice to be away from his office and back at Hogwarts, if only for an hour or two.
“Of course you have heard that I am retiring at the end of this term, Harry?”
“Yes. I was surprised, but I suppose 50 years is quite enough time to give to Hogwarts. Still, after you’re gone, well, there won’t be anyone here who Ginny or I had as a teacher. I had always sort of imagined our children having you as a professor. It’ll be a different Hogwarts for them.”
“A better one, perhaps. Fifty years is more than enough time for any one person to be in a place. And, teaching two generations of Potter boys is enough for any witch, I’d say. On top of how many Weasleys? It’s amazing my hair didn’t turn as white as Albus’s years ago! And now that you and Ginny are having children yourselves—combining the two lines—and I’d be around 90 when they started at Hogwarts—is it any wonder I started to think about retirement?!” McGonagall chuckled and her eyes smiled in a way Harry had only occasionally seen as a student.
He had enjoyed getting to know his former Head of House as a peer, and friend of sorts, over the past decade. She wasn’t the sort to be chummy, but she and Harry had cooperated on various Ministry projects through the years as he and Ron had risen through the Auror Corps, and she had often been a guest at the Burrow at various extended family gatherings. It was as if she had in some way taken the place of Dumbledore in the galaxy of ex-Order people and Hogwarts classmates who still revolved around Harry, Ron and Hermione.
He supposed the change from teacher to friend had happened that day of the final battle, when he had instinctively defended her from Amycus Carrow, and then had heard her heartbroken keening when she saw Hagrid carry his apparently dead body from the Forbidden Forest.
Harry smiled in response to her quip about the combination of Potter and Weasley bloodlines and sipped his tea. Infants James and Albus Severus were already proving themselves to be spirited boys, and he could understand McGonagall’s trepidation.
“As you can see, I have begun going through my things and packing them up. And there are some things I wanted to give to you, things pertaining to your time here which I think you should have.”
She waved her wand towards one of the boxes which was still open, and three thick leather-bound books sailed through the air and settled themselves on the table in front of him. He recognized Dumbledore’s personal crest embossed on the cover of each, and he could even feel the late Headmaster’s magic tingling around them. The spines bore dates in gold-leaf. They were labeled “1980-1982,” “1994-1996,” and “1996-1997.”
“These are some of Albus’s private journals. All of his personal effects came to me when he died, of course, except for those things he specifically left to you and Hermione and Ron. These volumes include his thoughts on, well, key turning points in your life. I feel you should have them. I perhaps should have given them to you earlier, after the final battle. But I wanted you to have some time, some emotional space, to come to terms with Albus on your own, after everything that happened that year, and everything you learned. I wanted you to be able to grapple with his memory and what you meant to each other and what he asked of you, without his once again launching into a monologue you couldn’t fairly rebut ”
“Why are you giving them to me now, then?”
“Well, as I’m sorting through things, it seemed a logical time. But also, when you named Albus Severus after him, it showed you still hold him in high esteem, in spite of everything.” McGonagall’s voice seemed to catch a bit. “So, giving you these would not be unfair to you, or appear to be a purely selfish effort on my part to rehabilitate him in your eyes.”
“Whatever rehabilitation was needed happened long ago, Minerva. Most of it on the day of the final battle, in fact. I thought you knew that.”
“I had hoped. He loved you so much, despite what it surely seemed at times, and I dearly hoped you accepted that. But I had not wanted to ask. It was not my place. Of course I had heard, through Hermione and Ron, and even his portrait, that you had, well, been with him in a way, that day.”
“And,” she nodded towards the doorway into her office, where the Headmaster’s portrait still hung over the desk, “he seemed to think you had reconciled. But Albus always did want to see the best in situations and people. And I don’t think he could ever have admitted it to me, or even to himself, if you hadn’t actually forgiven him. It would have been, well…he would have kept that to himself, I think.”
“He did always keep a lot to himself, didn’t he?”
“Yes. Which is why I thought you should have these. They show what he was really thinking and feeling about you, the prophecy, what you would have to do. Things he kept to himself, some of them even from me, at the time. As you can tell, they are still heavily warded, even now. He left me an encrypted, disguised parchment with the counter-charms, and I’ll teach them to you. As an Auror you should find it quite impressive magic, actually.”
“And what will I find when I read them?”
McGonagall met Harry’s gaze deliberately. “How much he cared about you. How he rationalized leaving you with those awful Muggles. How hard it was for him as he began to suspect exactly what had happened to you the night your parents died.”
Now she had to look away, and as her voice began to quaver she pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and began to twist it in her hands.
“What it would mean. How he agonized about it all. His suspicions, his desperate hope, about the blood link between you and Voldemort. What he felt he had to ask you to do. For the greater good. Debating with himself how much to tell you, and how, and when. Arguing with himself, justifying his decisions to himself. That he hadn’t really raised you as a pig for slaughter. Oh, how Severus hurt him with that.” Minerva dabbed at her eyes.
“He loved you so much, Harry. As he watched you in your first years here, it was as if you were the son he never had, never would have. Then when things, implications, became clearer—I don’t know which weakened him more--that curse on his hand or knowing what he felt he had to ask you to do. How he hated himself for it. He always felt responsible for his sister’s death, and now he was sending you …well, he thought that awful curse was the least he deserved.”
“But no sense my telling you all about it. You can read it for yourself and come to your own conclusions. You might not agree with all that he did, but at least now you’ll know why he did it, what it cost him, and that he did love you, no matter what it felt like at the time.
“Maybe these will clear up any questions you still have, things you didn’t think to ask him before. I think, I hope, you’ll find them helpful. I did, anyway. There were so many things he didn’t even tell me.”
“Well, I guess if you automatically inherited all his things, including his confidential journals, that itself tells me something else that I’d always wondered about, but never felt it was my place to ask.”
“And what would that be?”
“Err, that you were together, then. A couple. Married, even. Speculating on Dumbledore’s personal life was always such the student pastime. There were even odds on the different possibilities, and folks actually placed money bets. Now I finally know!”
“Yes, Albus and I were married. We were just about to celebrate our fortieth anniversary as a couple when he died, and we’d been married thirty seven years. We kept it a secret, for reasons I’m sure you can imagine, and even now not many people know. It was a shock to the Ministry wizards who handled the will, I can tell you. Kingsley obliviated them afterwards, actually, and altered the parchment, so that I would not be at more risk for attack than I already was.”
“Wow.”
“Wow indeed. Life with Albus was never dull.” Minerva laughed, her earlier tears now gone. “I have to know—how much money did you risk on the question? And what exactly were the odds?”
“Well, when he died without us ever knowing for sure, I think the entire pool went to the scholarship fund for orphan students set up in his name. And frankly, I hadn’t put any money in, because I hadn’t been sure which side I came down on. He was sort of like a father or grandfather to me, and to think of him being in a relationship with anyone--well I just didn’t want to think about it at all in those days, to be honest. Sorry—nothing personal! But as I recall, the odds were maybe 2:1 in favor of the two of you being an item.”
“2:1 that we were together, eh? What was the other option—that he had some wife or girlfriend sequestered in Hogsmeade?”
“Err, umm,” Harry shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“Out with it, Potter. I’ve heard all the rumours, trust me. All of them. For years. I’m just curious which were the most prevalent towards the end, when he died.” She shoved the ever-present tin of ginger newts towards him. It was still her instinct when a student was nervous, just as Albus had always offered sweets.
“Well, actually, a lot of people thought he was gay. Since they never saw any sign of a wife or girlfriend, ever, in a hundred years. And he was such, well, a non-conformist, shall we say?”
“You mean, in other words, that his robes were flamboyant even by wizarding standards. And he wasn’t exactly the most, what’s the muggle term, ‘macho’ of wizards. Candy, and music, and knitting patterns, and such.”
Minerva smiled at the memory of some of Albus’s more attention-getting outfits, and of the nights he’d spent sitting in front of their fireplace, knitting a tiny baby sweater with a detailed cable pattern or an elaborately-striped pair of socks.
“Well, err, yes, I guess, that was a lot of it.”
“So you didn’t put money in the pool yourself. I can certainly understand why. What did Ron and Hermione think, and the other Gryffindors?”
“Ron definitely thought that he was with you if he was with anybody. As did Fred and George, I think, though they joked so much about everything I was never sure what opinion they really held. Colin definitely thought you were together. Seamus, well, his parents didn’t care for Dumbledore much, so I think they told him stories they’d heard from the likes of Rita Skeeter. Neville, I think he was kind of like me—didn’t really want to think about it at all.”
“You haven’t said what Hermione thought.”
“Well, honestly, she wasn’t entirely sure—not having any firm evidence to go on, and it’s not exactly the sort of thing you can learn in Hogwarts, A History is it? But I have to admit she thought it more likely that he was gay than not. Especially after we learned more about his youth. And she made a pretty good case. Enough so that when I was with him that last time, at King’s Cross I mean, I thought she had probably been right.”
Harry suddenly grinned widely. “This will actually be one of the very few times I’ve caught her being wrong about something! And something major about Dumbledore, no less. When she was always the one defending him to me when, well, when I had my doubts, at the worst of it.”
Minerva turned towards Harry, a serious look on her face. “What if I told you both options were right?”
Harry looked at her, his mouth slightly open, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean? You just said you were together for forty years, married for almost all that time.”
“Yes, we were. That is very true. And we loved each other, very much. But it is also true that Albus was gay. If he had been born in a different era, say, when you were, he never would have been married, or in a relationship with a witch. He’d have eventually found some wonderful brilliant wizard for himself and they’d have lived happily ever after. Or so I’d like to think.”
Minerva waved her wand to refill the teapot that sat in front of them. Another wave brought a bottle of finest firewhisky and a pair of tumblers to join it.
Harry still stared at her, open-mouthed, oblivious to the beverages. “I don’t understand. How could he have been gay if he was with you? Or with you if he was gay? Or, or--I just don’t get it!”
“Pardon me, but I think I need something a bit more than tea to do this topic justice, Harry—feel free to help yourself,” Minerva said, filling a tumbler with whisky and taking a long sip.
Harry quickly echoed her actions. He didn’t normally drink when in uniform, but exceptions could be made in cases of extreme need. Dumbledore as gay he could understand, had come to accept, even, though he didn’t particularly like to think of the implications. Dumbledore with Minerva he could understand. But a gay Dumbledore with Minerva? His head was spinning.
“It’s something I’ve always hoped you’d hear from me rather than anybody else, anybody other than Albus, that is. I gather he never told you, and I’ve never been one to talk about my personal life. But it will make some entries in these journals easier to understand—they’re not all about Voldemort or you, though the majority are. So.” She took a deep breath, as if steeling herself for an ordeal.
“Think, Harry. When was Albus born?”
“Err, sometime in the middle-late 1800s, right?”
“Right. 1881. So he was a teenager in the 1890s. From a conventional wizarding family, at least as relationships go, in a rural town. Mould-on-the-Wold was not exactly Edinbugh or London, and nor was Godric’s Hollow. As a boy he surely never heard the word “gay,” or any of its 19th century equivalents, or knew anyone who was, or admitted to it.
“He came to Hogwarts when there were many more boys than girls as students—most witches were still educated at home in those days--and the feelings he began to have towards other boys he dismissed as the stereotypical boys’-school thing. Plus he was so focused on his studies and accomplishments romance wasn’t a priority. It wasn’t until that summer after he graduated…”
“He fell in love with Grindelwald, didn’t he!” Harry interrupted.
“Yes, Harry, he did. Totally head-over-heels in love with him….”
“That letter, their friendship, something in his voice when he talked about it at King’s Cross—it was what made me think at the end that Hermione was right. So much so that I suggested to him that Grindelwald lied to Voldemort about the Elder Wand, and let him kill him, to protect Dumbledore, to honor his wishes and protect his tomb. And when I said that to him, he actually teared up. That’s when I really thought I was right. But I still don’t understand.”
“Nor did Albus, Harry, nor did Albus! Not for many decades, anyway.” Minerva paused in her account and took another several sips of whisky, looking into her tumbler as if it could tell her how to help Harry understand what she still sometimes found beyond rational understanding.
“The relationship with Grindelwald—what did Albus always call it—two months of insanity? Two months of infatuation, lust, and exploration, magical and otherwise. He had fallen totally in love with Gellert. He’d had crushes as a student at Hogwarts, but nothing he ever acted on. Gellert was his first, and as it turned out only, real relationship with a wizard, even as abbreviated as it was. Gellert found Albus fascinating, but apparently he wasn’t quite as smitten as Albus was. Albus may have been older, but he was the much more naïve of the two in matters of the heart. And then of course, you know how it ended. Tragically. If Gellert attacking Aberforth and possibly killing Ariana wasn’t bad enough, his running away the next day was what shattered what was left of Albus’s heart.
“His feelings for Gellert, and how the relationship ended, and what most of society still said in those day, especially in the country, about wizards who liked other wizards, got all tangled together in Albus’s head. He blamed himself horribly for Ariana’s death for the rest of his life, as you know, and was crippled by remorse. He concluded that being gay was obviously wrong and the duel and his sister’s death, and Gellert’s abandonment of him, were his punishment.
“He determined to never let himself have feelings for a wizard again. He judged himself as unworthy of being in a relationship with anyone, even a witch, after having fallen for someone so evil. For nearly half a century he lived like a monk as far as his romantic life was concerned. He continued to feel attracted to wizards, but as you know he had an amazingly powerful and disciplined mind and he was largely able to ignore the feelings and dismiss them as inconsequential. And once he started working at Hogwarts—in those days even the faintest rumour of his being homosexual would have sunk his career. When I was his student there was not a whisper of it. And he was clearly so busy with the war that no one found it odd he had no wife or girlfriend.
“When he finally had to duel Grindelwald, and defeated him, he thought that meant he had also managed to defeat the attraction to wizards. He did not normally put much stock in signs and prophecies, as you well know. But he was so desperate to believe himself free of it, and so used to thinking like an alchemist, where the outer world affects the inner, that he convinced himself that the duel was a definitive sign. He was sure he would now be able to fall in love with a witch.”
“So in the years after the Grindelwald war he dated various witches. He certainly had no shortage of them throwing themselves at him in those days. He never fell in love with any of them, though, or even felt strongly attracted. But he attributed that to the rather haphazard way he was meeting them, since most of his time was still devoted to Hogwarts, and even heterosexual dating isn’t easy when you live in this castle 10 months a year.”
-continued in next post.-
Pehaps the first "gay Albus"-compliant ADMM fan- fic here?
Acceptable for anyone who is old enough to know what "gay" is and what "attraction" is. Sexual activity alluded to but not described.
One-shot, posted in three parts for length.
Part 2 edited which pushed it into 3 posts--a baby plot bunny attacked me just after I went to bed. Inspired by one of my favorite lines in the movie version of OoTP: "You have to admit he's got style."
- - - - - - - - -
Harry sat in one of the armchairs in the study adjacent to the Headmistress’s office, sipping a cup of the strong tea McGonagall had served them both. It banished the last of the chill that the blustery early December winds had given him as he trudged up from the school gates, cutting through even his thick Auror robes. The chair, covered in a subtle tartan fabric, was not nearly as overstuffed as those Dumbledore had used. Harry could see a few boxes stacked neatly in the back of the room.
McGonagall had been re-appointed Headmistress after the final defeat of Voldemort, and had presided over Hogwarts’ physical and academic reconstruction. Now, a decade later, the school had regained and even surpassed the excellence it had been known for in Dumbledore’s time. McGonagall had given notice to the Board of Governors that she intended to retire on the 50th anniversary of her date of hire, and in keeping with her strictly organized personality she was clearly already beginning to sort through the items in her office and quarters. He wasn't sure why she had requested a meeting with him, but it was nice to be away from his office and back at Hogwarts, if only for an hour or two.
“Of course you have heard that I am retiring at the end of this term, Harry?”
“Yes. I was surprised, but I suppose 50 years is quite enough time to give to Hogwarts. Still, after you’re gone, well, there won’t be anyone here who Ginny or I had as a teacher. I had always sort of imagined our children having you as a professor. It’ll be a different Hogwarts for them.”
“A better one, perhaps. Fifty years is more than enough time for any one person to be in a place. And, teaching two generations of Potter boys is enough for any witch, I’d say. On top of how many Weasleys? It’s amazing my hair didn’t turn as white as Albus’s years ago! And now that you and Ginny are having children yourselves—combining the two lines—and I’d be around 90 when they started at Hogwarts—is it any wonder I started to think about retirement?!” McGonagall chuckled and her eyes smiled in a way Harry had only occasionally seen as a student.
He had enjoyed getting to know his former Head of House as a peer, and friend of sorts, over the past decade. She wasn’t the sort to be chummy, but she and Harry had cooperated on various Ministry projects through the years as he and Ron had risen through the Auror Corps, and she had often been a guest at the Burrow at various extended family gatherings. It was as if she had in some way taken the place of Dumbledore in the galaxy of ex-Order people and Hogwarts classmates who still revolved around Harry, Ron and Hermione.
He supposed the change from teacher to friend had happened that day of the final battle, when he had instinctively defended her from Amycus Carrow, and then had heard her heartbroken keening when she saw Hagrid carry his apparently dead body from the Forbidden Forest.
Harry smiled in response to her quip about the combination of Potter and Weasley bloodlines and sipped his tea. Infants James and Albus Severus were already proving themselves to be spirited boys, and he could understand McGonagall’s trepidation.
“As you can see, I have begun going through my things and packing them up. And there are some things I wanted to give to you, things pertaining to your time here which I think you should have.”
She waved her wand towards one of the boxes which was still open, and three thick leather-bound books sailed through the air and settled themselves on the table in front of him. He recognized Dumbledore’s personal crest embossed on the cover of each, and he could even feel the late Headmaster’s magic tingling around them. The spines bore dates in gold-leaf. They were labeled “1980-1982,” “1994-1996,” and “1996-1997.”
“These are some of Albus’s private journals. All of his personal effects came to me when he died, of course, except for those things he specifically left to you and Hermione and Ron. These volumes include his thoughts on, well, key turning points in your life. I feel you should have them. I perhaps should have given them to you earlier, after the final battle. But I wanted you to have some time, some emotional space, to come to terms with Albus on your own, after everything that happened that year, and everything you learned. I wanted you to be able to grapple with his memory and what you meant to each other and what he asked of you, without his once again launching into a monologue you couldn’t fairly rebut ”
“Why are you giving them to me now, then?”
“Well, as I’m sorting through things, it seemed a logical time. But also, when you named Albus Severus after him, it showed you still hold him in high esteem, in spite of everything.” McGonagall’s voice seemed to catch a bit. “So, giving you these would not be unfair to you, or appear to be a purely selfish effort on my part to rehabilitate him in your eyes.”
“Whatever rehabilitation was needed happened long ago, Minerva. Most of it on the day of the final battle, in fact. I thought you knew that.”
“I had hoped. He loved you so much, despite what it surely seemed at times, and I dearly hoped you accepted that. But I had not wanted to ask. It was not my place. Of course I had heard, through Hermione and Ron, and even his portrait, that you had, well, been with him in a way, that day.”
“And,” she nodded towards the doorway into her office, where the Headmaster’s portrait still hung over the desk, “he seemed to think you had reconciled. But Albus always did want to see the best in situations and people. And I don’t think he could ever have admitted it to me, or even to himself, if you hadn’t actually forgiven him. It would have been, well…he would have kept that to himself, I think.”
“He did always keep a lot to himself, didn’t he?”
“Yes. Which is why I thought you should have these. They show what he was really thinking and feeling about you, the prophecy, what you would have to do. Things he kept to himself, some of them even from me, at the time. As you can tell, they are still heavily warded, even now. He left me an encrypted, disguised parchment with the counter-charms, and I’ll teach them to you. As an Auror you should find it quite impressive magic, actually.”
“And what will I find when I read them?”
McGonagall met Harry’s gaze deliberately. “How much he cared about you. How he rationalized leaving you with those awful Muggles. How hard it was for him as he began to suspect exactly what had happened to you the night your parents died.”
Now she had to look away, and as her voice began to quaver she pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and began to twist it in her hands.
“What it would mean. How he agonized about it all. His suspicions, his desperate hope, about the blood link between you and Voldemort. What he felt he had to ask you to do. For the greater good. Debating with himself how much to tell you, and how, and when. Arguing with himself, justifying his decisions to himself. That he hadn’t really raised you as a pig for slaughter. Oh, how Severus hurt him with that.” Minerva dabbed at her eyes.
“He loved you so much, Harry. As he watched you in your first years here, it was as if you were the son he never had, never would have. Then when things, implications, became clearer—I don’t know which weakened him more--that curse on his hand or knowing what he felt he had to ask you to do. How he hated himself for it. He always felt responsible for his sister’s death, and now he was sending you …well, he thought that awful curse was the least he deserved.”
“But no sense my telling you all about it. You can read it for yourself and come to your own conclusions. You might not agree with all that he did, but at least now you’ll know why he did it, what it cost him, and that he did love you, no matter what it felt like at the time.
“Maybe these will clear up any questions you still have, things you didn’t think to ask him before. I think, I hope, you’ll find them helpful. I did, anyway. There were so many things he didn’t even tell me.”
“Well, I guess if you automatically inherited all his things, including his confidential journals, that itself tells me something else that I’d always wondered about, but never felt it was my place to ask.”
“And what would that be?”
“Err, that you were together, then. A couple. Married, even. Speculating on Dumbledore’s personal life was always such the student pastime. There were even odds on the different possibilities, and folks actually placed money bets. Now I finally know!”
“Yes, Albus and I were married. We were just about to celebrate our fortieth anniversary as a couple when he died, and we’d been married thirty seven years. We kept it a secret, for reasons I’m sure you can imagine, and even now not many people know. It was a shock to the Ministry wizards who handled the will, I can tell you. Kingsley obliviated them afterwards, actually, and altered the parchment, so that I would not be at more risk for attack than I already was.”
“Wow.”
“Wow indeed. Life with Albus was never dull.” Minerva laughed, her earlier tears now gone. “I have to know—how much money did you risk on the question? And what exactly were the odds?”
“Well, when he died without us ever knowing for sure, I think the entire pool went to the scholarship fund for orphan students set up in his name. And frankly, I hadn’t put any money in, because I hadn’t been sure which side I came down on. He was sort of like a father or grandfather to me, and to think of him being in a relationship with anyone--well I just didn’t want to think about it at all in those days, to be honest. Sorry—nothing personal! But as I recall, the odds were maybe 2:1 in favor of the two of you being an item.”
“2:1 that we were together, eh? What was the other option—that he had some wife or girlfriend sequestered in Hogsmeade?”
“Err, umm,” Harry shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“Out with it, Potter. I’ve heard all the rumours, trust me. All of them. For years. I’m just curious which were the most prevalent towards the end, when he died.” She shoved the ever-present tin of ginger newts towards him. It was still her instinct when a student was nervous, just as Albus had always offered sweets.
“Well, actually, a lot of people thought he was gay. Since they never saw any sign of a wife or girlfriend, ever, in a hundred years. And he was such, well, a non-conformist, shall we say?”
“You mean, in other words, that his robes were flamboyant even by wizarding standards. And he wasn’t exactly the most, what’s the muggle term, ‘macho’ of wizards. Candy, and music, and knitting patterns, and such.”
Minerva smiled at the memory of some of Albus’s more attention-getting outfits, and of the nights he’d spent sitting in front of their fireplace, knitting a tiny baby sweater with a detailed cable pattern or an elaborately-striped pair of socks.
“Well, err, yes, I guess, that was a lot of it.”
“So you didn’t put money in the pool yourself. I can certainly understand why. What did Ron and Hermione think, and the other Gryffindors?”
“Ron definitely thought that he was with you if he was with anybody. As did Fred and George, I think, though they joked so much about everything I was never sure what opinion they really held. Colin definitely thought you were together. Seamus, well, his parents didn’t care for Dumbledore much, so I think they told him stories they’d heard from the likes of Rita Skeeter. Neville, I think he was kind of like me—didn’t really want to think about it at all.”
“You haven’t said what Hermione thought.”
“Well, honestly, she wasn’t entirely sure—not having any firm evidence to go on, and it’s not exactly the sort of thing you can learn in Hogwarts, A History is it? But I have to admit she thought it more likely that he was gay than not. Especially after we learned more about his youth. And she made a pretty good case. Enough so that when I was with him that last time, at King’s Cross I mean, I thought she had probably been right.”
Harry suddenly grinned widely. “This will actually be one of the very few times I’ve caught her being wrong about something! And something major about Dumbledore, no less. When she was always the one defending him to me when, well, when I had my doubts, at the worst of it.”
Minerva turned towards Harry, a serious look on her face. “What if I told you both options were right?”
Harry looked at her, his mouth slightly open, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean? You just said you were together for forty years, married for almost all that time.”
“Yes, we were. That is very true. And we loved each other, very much. But it is also true that Albus was gay. If he had been born in a different era, say, when you were, he never would have been married, or in a relationship with a witch. He’d have eventually found some wonderful brilliant wizard for himself and they’d have lived happily ever after. Or so I’d like to think.”
Minerva waved her wand to refill the teapot that sat in front of them. Another wave brought a bottle of finest firewhisky and a pair of tumblers to join it.
Harry still stared at her, open-mouthed, oblivious to the beverages. “I don’t understand. How could he have been gay if he was with you? Or with you if he was gay? Or, or--I just don’t get it!”
“Pardon me, but I think I need something a bit more than tea to do this topic justice, Harry—feel free to help yourself,” Minerva said, filling a tumbler with whisky and taking a long sip.
Harry quickly echoed her actions. He didn’t normally drink when in uniform, but exceptions could be made in cases of extreme need. Dumbledore as gay he could understand, had come to accept, even, though he didn’t particularly like to think of the implications. Dumbledore with Minerva he could understand. But a gay Dumbledore with Minerva? His head was spinning.
“It’s something I’ve always hoped you’d hear from me rather than anybody else, anybody other than Albus, that is. I gather he never told you, and I’ve never been one to talk about my personal life. But it will make some entries in these journals easier to understand—they’re not all about Voldemort or you, though the majority are. So.” She took a deep breath, as if steeling herself for an ordeal.
“Think, Harry. When was Albus born?”
“Err, sometime in the middle-late 1800s, right?”
“Right. 1881. So he was a teenager in the 1890s. From a conventional wizarding family, at least as relationships go, in a rural town. Mould-on-the-Wold was not exactly Edinbugh or London, and nor was Godric’s Hollow. As a boy he surely never heard the word “gay,” or any of its 19th century equivalents, or knew anyone who was, or admitted to it.
“He came to Hogwarts when there were many more boys than girls as students—most witches were still educated at home in those days--and the feelings he began to have towards other boys he dismissed as the stereotypical boys’-school thing. Plus he was so focused on his studies and accomplishments romance wasn’t a priority. It wasn’t until that summer after he graduated…”
“He fell in love with Grindelwald, didn’t he!” Harry interrupted.
“Yes, Harry, he did. Totally head-over-heels in love with him….”
“That letter, their friendship, something in his voice when he talked about it at King’s Cross—it was what made me think at the end that Hermione was right. So much so that I suggested to him that Grindelwald lied to Voldemort about the Elder Wand, and let him kill him, to protect Dumbledore, to honor his wishes and protect his tomb. And when I said that to him, he actually teared up. That’s when I really thought I was right. But I still don’t understand.”
“Nor did Albus, Harry, nor did Albus! Not for many decades, anyway.” Minerva paused in her account and took another several sips of whisky, looking into her tumbler as if it could tell her how to help Harry understand what she still sometimes found beyond rational understanding.
“The relationship with Grindelwald—what did Albus always call it—two months of insanity? Two months of infatuation, lust, and exploration, magical and otherwise. He had fallen totally in love with Gellert. He’d had crushes as a student at Hogwarts, but nothing he ever acted on. Gellert was his first, and as it turned out only, real relationship with a wizard, even as abbreviated as it was. Gellert found Albus fascinating, but apparently he wasn’t quite as smitten as Albus was. Albus may have been older, but he was the much more naïve of the two in matters of the heart. And then of course, you know how it ended. Tragically. If Gellert attacking Aberforth and possibly killing Ariana wasn’t bad enough, his running away the next day was what shattered what was left of Albus’s heart.
“His feelings for Gellert, and how the relationship ended, and what most of society still said in those day, especially in the country, about wizards who liked other wizards, got all tangled together in Albus’s head. He blamed himself horribly for Ariana’s death for the rest of his life, as you know, and was crippled by remorse. He concluded that being gay was obviously wrong and the duel and his sister’s death, and Gellert’s abandonment of him, were his punishment.
“He determined to never let himself have feelings for a wizard again. He judged himself as unworthy of being in a relationship with anyone, even a witch, after having fallen for someone so evil. For nearly half a century he lived like a monk as far as his romantic life was concerned. He continued to feel attracted to wizards, but as you know he had an amazingly powerful and disciplined mind and he was largely able to ignore the feelings and dismiss them as inconsequential. And once he started working at Hogwarts—in those days even the faintest rumour of his being homosexual would have sunk his career. When I was his student there was not a whisper of it. And he was clearly so busy with the war that no one found it odd he had no wife or girlfriend.
“When he finally had to duel Grindelwald, and defeated him, he thought that meant he had also managed to defeat the attraction to wizards. He did not normally put much stock in signs and prophecies, as you well know. But he was so desperate to believe himself free of it, and so used to thinking like an alchemist, where the outer world affects the inner, that he convinced himself that the duel was a definitive sign. He was sure he would now be able to fall in love with a witch.”
“So in the years after the Grindelwald war he dated various witches. He certainly had no shortage of them throwing themselves at him in those days. He never fell in love with any of them, though, or even felt strongly attracted. But he attributed that to the rather haphazard way he was meeting them, since most of his time was still devoted to Hogwarts, and even heterosexual dating isn’t easy when you live in this castle 10 months a year.”
-continued in next post.-
x