Harry's Grief - 10

"Sir?" Harry choked, confused.

He felt Ginny's hand on his back, reassuring him, and he leaned into her touch.

"For years I kept a jar on my desk, and I always offered sweets to my visitors, but no one ever accepted," Professor Dumbledore said wistfully. "I find it amusing to continue offering them, since now there is obviously no way I can really oblige. However, people still merely shake their heads at the offer, and I am certain they never really consider it. But you, Harry, you were the only one who always accepted my offer. I always enjoyed that about you."

Harry nodded, unable to speak.

"So, tell me, how far have you come in your quest to locate all of Tom's Horcruxes?" Professor Dumbledore asked, folding his long fingers beneath his chin in a gesture that was so familiar it made Harry's heart constrict.

"You know about them, then?" Ginny asked, unable to restrain herself. Realizing she'd interrupted, she blushed and tugged at a strand of hair. "I mean…we weren't certain how much you'd be aware of since…"

"Not to worry, Miss Weasley. I regularly updated the enchantment to ensure my portrait would have full awareness of my activities up to the point of my demise. I was always rather clever with foresight, if I do say so myself," Professor Dumbledore said, smiling kindly.

"Do you know how you… How it happened?" Harry asked, unable to stop the hard edge that had crept into his voice once he finally found it.

The twinkle in Dumbledore's eyes flickered and waned as he nodded solemnly. "I do. Professor McGonagall has been good enough to keep me apprised of current events. She told me about Severus."

"You…you didn't have some sort of plan with him then, sir?" Hermione asked, wincing slightly under Harry's fierce glare.

"Alas…no, Miss Granger, I did not. I believed Severus truly regretted his past misdeeds and was seeking redemption through his service to me. I was mistaken. I think I told you once before, Harry, did I not, that my mistakes in judgment tended to be larger than most?"

"But why? Why did you trust him so?" Harry asked, his throat tight.

Dumbledore smiled, his sad eyes drifting over each of them before answering. "Perhaps it was my own hope for his redemption. I wanted to believe he had changed – that I had managed to reach him. I wanted him to have a second chance to realize that his choices could be different – that walking a different path could change everything.

"I had always felt guilty for the life Severus led. I wished I could have done more for him. I wish I had realized sooner how close to the edge he was walking when he was a student here. Severus always felt persecuted – as if his teachers and all authority figures had it in for him. After so many years of the same complaints, it became so that the faculty – myself included – only listened to him with half an ear. When he turned to the Dark, I felt I had failed him."

Professor Dumbledore's eyes dulled, taking on a faraway expression.

Harry compressed his lips, barely able to contain his fury that this echo, or imprint, or portrait – whatever it was – of Professor Dumbledore would feel guilty for failing Snape when Snape was the one who had forced Harry to have to talk to him in this way in the first place.

He glanced up to find Dumbledore's intense blue eyes boring him into him. He held his hand in the air as if trying to reach out and touch Harry, but it was impossible.