Chapter - 34 : Distrust

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Albus Dumbledore began to feel distress over something he'd observed and went to discuss it with McGonagall, who he felt could have useful insight, as she often passed on little tidbits the students had trusted her with.

Harry had, if anything, underestimated how much and how thoroughly the Headmaster had rigged the castle to be an information network. Albus had every ghost and painting spy for him, naturally, and all the staff as well. The elves reported everything to him, as did the castle's wards, and as if that were not enough he frequently roamed the halls invisibly himself, observing directly what was of the most direct and pertinent interest to him.

Dumbledore had never heard of the muggle game called Paranoia, about a dark, dystopian future where a fanatical and insane computer spied upon its human charges so thoroughly that every time they visited a toilet not only were they watched on camera, but what came out of them was carefully weighed, measured and tested as a matter of routine.

However, Albus had that 'Friend Computer' beat three ways. For one thing, the city it ruled over was in a state of terrible disrepair that created the odd blind spots, while Hogwarts was in peak condition, functioning perfectly. And he was at the nerve center for everything.

His agents, the elves, ghosts and teachers, not to mention prefects and certain students, could give their reports to paintings and Albus would hear it as though they were spoken to himself. He heard and saw what any of the portraits in the castle did, and so could almost literally be said to see and hear everything that went on inside of Hogwarts.

It almost made him feel like a god, at times, knowing that much.

No ordinary mind could possibly have processed the information load that he demanded, but where Voldemort, the Dark Slytherin, had performed rituals to grant him power, Albus Dumbledore had, true to Harry's assessment of him as a Dark Ravenclaw, performed his to increase his ability to handle and process raw information.

Every painting was his eyes, every ghost his ears, and each suit of armor his hands, if he should choose to use them. In his castle Albus felt invincible, invulnerable, and, yes, frequently invisible as well, being seen only when he chose to be so.

No spider knew more about its web than he did about Hogwarts. Within his lair his knowledge was so near absolute that he could extrapolate from what he'd learned within to know the majority of useful happenings outside the school as well, from conversations and other things overheard or seen.

Surely no creature was half as worthy as he to control the little ants that were the rest of the wizarding world. None among them could claim even half of his knowledge, not even a hundredth part of it! He knew things so far in advance of their actual happening, from small signs observed and then extrapolated forward through his more than a century of experience, that if he wished he could easily have himself passed off as a seer.

But that could cause those little ants to busy themselves trying to extract nuggets of that knowledge from him for their own benefit, and that simply wouldn't do! They were his to command, not in any position to require favors.

Besides, he preferred not to share knowledge of any sort, as the more his ants knew, the more complicated they made things, and the more trouble they were to manipulate 'For The Greater Good.'

He'd never quite completed that phrase out in public. People always imagined the tag line 'for the greater good of the world', or 'society in general', but every time he spoke it he completed it in the privacy of his own mind the way he actually meant it, 'for the greater good of Albus Dumbledore.'

It really was only fair. To his mind, the rest of wizard-kind were nothing more than bugs, deserving of pity perhaps, for not being as magnificent as he, but certainly no empathy.

Those who distrusted him frequently suspected his lemon drops were laced with potions. In that, they were correct, but it was less to control his staff and students than it was to contain himself. For over a century he'd needed regular doses of the potions and charms laden within them to maintain that grandfatherly air he was so famous for, and not go into cackling displays of narcissism out in public and tell people what he really thought of them.

No, that wouldn't do his reputation any good at all.

Dumbledore was a monster, incapable of feeling pity, compassion or remorse. However, through a cocktail of potions including a special draught of cheering charms, he was perfectly able to fake the image of a kindly grandfather.

Thus, he encouraged the blind fools and students to trust him, as even his foes counted him as a dottering old fool, and mostly harmless. It was really one of his most brilliant ideas, and he'd had it so long ago.

More the fools they, but everyone (outside himself) was so easily deceived!

However, every so often one of his schemes began to go not completely right and had to be corrected for, and he feared one of those times was upon him right now.

Blast that boy! He should never have surrendered the Potter invisibility cloak to him! But the boy had been so meek and pliable back then, and he'd needed to know if it had any powers usable only by one with the Potter bloodline.

But this year the infernal brat had taken to wearing it often, and that made him distressingly hard to track. None of his paintings, and few of his staff or ghosts, could sense the invisible with any reliability.

Why must the boy complicate things? All Harry had to do was suffer and die according to a schedule Albus had arranged. Then everything would be fine!

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