Harry, I'm sorry,

         "The Dumbledore we thought we knew didn't want to conquer Muggles by force!"
Harry shouted, his voice echoing across the empty hilltop, and several blackbirds rose
into the air, squawking and spiraling against the pearly sky.
         "He changed, Harry, he changed! It's as simple as that! Maybe he did believe
these things when he was seventeen, but the whole of the rest of his life was devoted to
fighting the Dark Arts! Dumbledore was the one who stopped Grindelwald, the one who

always voted for Muggle protection and Muggle born rights, who fought You-Know-
Who from the start, and who died trying to bring him down!"
        Rita's book lay on the ground between them, so that the face of Albus
Dumbledore smiled dolefully at both.
        "Harry, I'm sorry, but I think the real reason you're so angry is that Dumbledore
never told you any of this himself."
        "Maybe I am!" Harry bellowed, and he flung his arms over his head, hardly
knowing whether he was trying to hold in his anger or protect himself from the weight of
his own disillusionment. "Look what he asked from me, Hermione! Risk your life, Harry!
And again! And again! And don't expect me to explain everything, just trust me blindly,
trust that I know what I'm doing, trust me even though I don't trust you! Never the whole
truth! Never!"
        His voice cracked with the strain, and they stood looking at each other in the
whiteness and emptiness, and Harry felt they were as insignificant as insects beneath that
wide sky.
        "He loved you," Hermione whispered. "I know he loved you."
        Harry dropped his arms.
        "I don't know who he loved, Hermione, but it was never me. This isn't love, the
mess he's left me in. He shared a damn sight more of what he was really thinking with
Gellert Grindelwald than he ever shared with me."
        Harry picked up Hermione's wand, which he had dropped in the snow, and sat
back down in the entrance of the tent.
        "Thanks for the tea. I'll finish the watch. You get back in the warm."
    She hesitated, but recognized the dismissal. She picked up the book and then walked
back past him into the tent, but as she did so, she brushed the top of his head lightly with
her hand. He closed his eyes at her touch, and hated himself for wishing that what she
said was true: that Dumbledore had really cared.