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How very, very sorry...
Apr. 19th, 2020 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunnyskywalkerI was re-reading some old DTCL posts, and a quote jumped out at me. Kings Cross Dumbledore, in his (muddled, probably incomplete) explanation for why he put on a cursed ring, says,
Hang on a minute. He wants to tell his father how sorry he is?
Ariana, sure. He thinks he might have killed her, and even if he didn't, he was partly responsible for the fight in which she got killed. That definitely calls for an apology. His mother, okay, maybe he was sorry he left to go on a Grand Tour instead of staying home to help her care for Ariana, and wonders if he could have saved her if he'd been there. Or he wants to apologize for failing so badly in the responsibility she passed to him. I'm sure Kendra would have been upset about Albus getting Ariana killed after a mere two months because he was plotting to conquer the world.
But his father? What was he sorry for there--that he didn't, at the age of ten, stop his dad from torturing Muggle kids and going to prison? That he didn't break him out of prison? Maybe he just generally wanted to express sorrow that his dad was psychologically tortured to death in Azkaban, because that's awful... but it seems a little odd to lump general sympathy in with apologizing to two other people he felt he wronged. Not impossible, but odd.
Years ago, Terri wrote a fic where little Albus was the one who really hurt the boys (in a panic, without intending to hurt them as badly as he did), and his father took the fall for it. This quote isn't proof, but it might tilt the odds more favorably in that direction.
"I picked it up, and I put it on, and for a second I imagined that I was about to see Ariana, and my mother, and my father, and to tell them how very, very sorry I was…"
Hang on a minute. He wants to tell his father how sorry he is?
Ariana, sure. He thinks he might have killed her, and even if he didn't, he was partly responsible for the fight in which she got killed. That definitely calls for an apology. His mother, okay, maybe he was sorry he left to go on a Grand Tour instead of staying home to help her care for Ariana, and wonders if he could have saved her if he'd been there. Or he wants to apologize for failing so badly in the responsibility she passed to him. I'm sure Kendra would have been upset about Albus getting Ariana killed after a mere two months because he was plotting to conquer the world.
But his father? What was he sorry for there--that he didn't, at the age of ten, stop his dad from torturing Muggle kids and going to prison? That he didn't break him out of prison? Maybe he just generally wanted to express sorrow that his dad was psychologically tortured to death in Azkaban, because that's awful... but it seems a little odd to lump general sympathy in with apologizing to two other people he felt he wronged. Not impossible, but odd.
Years ago, Terri wrote a fic where little Albus was the one who really hurt the boys (in a panic, without intending to hurt them as badly as he did), and his father took the fall for it. This quote isn't proof, but it might tilt the odds more favorably in that direction.
