There seemed to be very little air in Harry’s lungs; his breathing was quick and shallow.
“And Kreacher told you all this… and laughed?” he croaked.
“He did not wish to tell me,” said Dumbledore. “But I am a sufficiently accomplished Legilimens myself to know when I am being lied to and I—persuaded him—to tell me the full story, before I left for the Department of Mysteries.”
“And,” whispered Harry, his hands curled in cold fists on his knees, “and Hermione kept telling us to be nice to him—”
“She was quite right, Harry,” said Dumbledore. “I warned Sirius when we adopted twelve Grimmauld Place as our Headquarters that Kreacher must be treated with kindness and respect. I also told him that Kreacher could be dangerous to us. I do not think Sirius took me very seriously, or that he ever saw Kreacher as a being with feelings as acute as a human’s—”
“Don’t you blame—don’t you—talk—about Sirius like—” Harry’s breath was constricted, he could not get the words out properly; but the rage that had subsided briefly flared in him again: he would not let Dumbledore criticise Sirius. “Kreacher’s a lying—foul—he deserved—
“Kreacher is what he has been made by wizards, Harry,” said Dumbledore. “Yes, he is to be pitied. His existence has been as miserable as your friend Dobby’s. He was forced to do Sirius’s bidding, because Sirius was the last of the family to which he was enslaved, but he felt no true loyalty to him. And whatever Kreacher’s faults, it must be admitted that Sirius did nothing to make Kreacher’s lot easier—”
“DON’T TALK ABOUT SIRIUS LIKE THAT!” Harry yelled.
He was on his feet again, furious, ready to fly at Dumbledore, who had plainly not understood Sirius at all, how brave he was, how much he had suffered…
“What about Snape?” Harry spat. “You’re not talking about him, are you? When I told him Voldemort had Sirius he just sneered at me as usual—”
“Harry, you know Professor Snape had no choice but to pretend not to take you seriously in front of Dolores Umbridge,” said Dumbledore steadily, “but as I have explained, he informed the Order as soon as possible about what you had said. It was he who deduced where you had gone when you did not return from the Forest. It was he, too, who gave Professor Umbridge fake Veritaserum when she was attempting to force you to tell her Sirius’s whereabouts.”
Harry disregarded this; he felt a savage pleasure in blaming Snape, it seemed to be easing his own sense of dreadful guilt, and he wanted to hear Dumbledore agree with him.
“Snape—Snape g-goaded Sirius about staying in the house—he made out Sirius was a coward—”
“Sirius was much too old and clever to have allowed such feeble taunts to hurt him,” said Dumbledore.
“Snape stopped giving me Occlumency lessons!” Harry snarled. “He threw me out of his office!”
“I am aware of it,” said Dumbledore heavily “I have already said that it was a mistake for me not to teach you myself, though I was sure, at the time, that nothing could have been more dangerous than to open your mind even further to Voldemort while in my presence—”
“Snape made it worse, my scar always hurt worse after lessons with him—” Harry remembered Ron’s thoughts on the subject and plunged on “—how do you know he wasn’t trying to soften me up for Voldemort, make it easier for him to get inside my—”
“I trust Severus Snape,” said Dumbledore simply “But I forgot—another old man’s mistake—that some wounds run too deep for the healing. I thought Professor Snape could overcome his feelings about your father—I was wrong.”
“But that’s OK, is it?” yelled Harry, ignoring the scandalised faces and disapproving mutterings of the portraits on the walls. “It’s OK for Snape to hate my dad, but it’s not OK for Sirius to hate Kreacher?”
“Sirius did not hate Kreacher,” said Dumbledore. “He regarded him as a servant unworthy of much interest or notice. Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike… the fountain we destroyed tonight told a lie. We wizards have mistreated and abused our fellows for too long, and we are now reaping our reward.”
“SO SIRIUS DESERVED WHAT HE GOT, DID HE?” Harry yelled.
“I did not say that, nor will you ever hear me say it,” Dumbledore replied quietly. “Sirius was not a cruel man, he was kind to houseelves in general. He had no love for Kreacher, because Kreacher was a living reminder of the home Sirius had hated.”
“Yeah, he did hate it!” said Harry, his voice cracking, turning his back on Dumbledore and walking away. The sun was bright inside the room now and the eyes of all the portraits followed him as he walked, without realising what he was doing, without seeing the office at all. “You made him stay shut up in that house and he hated it, that’s why he wanted to get out last night—”
“I was trying to keep Sirius alive,” said Dumbledore quietly.
“People don’t like being locked up!” Harry said furiously, rounding on him. “You did it to me all last summer—”
Dumbledore closed his eyes and buried his face in his longfingered hands. Harry watched him, but this uncharacteristic sign of exhaustion, or sadness, or whatever it was from Dumbledore, did not soften him. On the contrary, he felt even angrier that Dumbledore was showing signs of weakness. He had no business being weak when Harry wanted to rage and storm at him.
Dumbledore lowered his hands and surveyed Harry through his half-moon glasses.
“It is time,” he said, “for me to tell you what I should have told you five years ago, Harry. Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything. I ask only a little patience. You will have your chance to rage at me—to do whatever you like—when I have finished. I will not stop you.”
Harry glared at him for a moment, then flung himself back into the chair opposite Dumbledore and waited.
Dumbledore stared for a moment at the sunlit grounds outside the window, then looked back at Harry and said, “Five years ago you arrived at Hogwarts, Harry, safe and whole, as I had planned and intended. Well—not quite whole. You had suffered. I knew you would when I left you on your aunt and uncle’s doorstep. I knew I was condemning you to ten dark and difficult years.”
He paused. Harry said nothing.
“You might ask—and with good reason—why it had to be so. Why could some wizarding family not have taken you in? Many would have done so more than gladly, would have been honoured and delighted to raise you as a son.
“My answer is that my priority was to keep you alive. You were in more danger than perhaps anyone but I realised. Voldemort had been vanquished hours before, but his supporters—and many of them are almost as terrible as he—were still at large, angry, desperate and violent. And I had to make my decision, too, with regard to the years ahead. Did I believe that Voldemort was gone for ever? No. I knew not whether it would be ten, twenty or fifty years before he returned, but I was sure he would do so, and I was sure, too, knowing him as I have done, that he would not rest until he killed you.
“I knew that Voldemort’s knowledge of magic is perhaps more extensive than any wizard alive. I knew that even my most complex and powerful protective spells and charms were unlikely to be invincible if he ever returned to full power.
“But I knew, too, where Voldemort was weak. And so I made my decision. You would be protected by an ancient magic of which he knows, which he despises, and which he has always, therefore, underestimated—to his cost. I am speaking, of course, of the fact that your mother died to save you. She gave you a lingering protection he never expected, a protection that flows in your veins to this day. I put my trust, therefore, in your mother’s blood. I delivered you to her sister, her only remaining relative.”