Percy Jackson and the Department of Mysteries

164) Today I Got The Grief World Record (Top Ten Leaderboard) *Emotional* 🤯🤯

"I know what you're feeling, Harry," Dumbledore said, proving instantly that he was not as wise as I thought he was. No matter whether you do understand or you don't, the feelings of the person you're trying to support are new, fresh and peculiar; they are a great unknown. One wants to be alone in those awful feelings, at least in the beginning, because if those horribly unfamiliar feelings have been felt by others, then that makes them common. That makes the terribleness in your heart something smaller, even though it feels unbearably big. It feels like a punch to the face, a "it's not that bad," a "I have dealt with this, so I know how you should deal with this."

No one really understands what anyone is feeling. They can get close, perhaps, but everyone's got their own heart and mind, entirely separate from the ones of those around them. Empathizing, walking around in one's shoes, doesn't make them your shoes.

But, maybe, all Dumbledore was trying to say was that Harry was not alone.

"No, you don't," Harry's voice was wrecked and raw, but there was fiery strength behind his words. His face shifted, shadows lengthening. He wasn't just upset or angry — he was furious.

Godsdamn, he was speed running the stages of grief. He'd done the denial, did a positively stunning job with the depression, and was quickly working through anger. All that was left was bargaining and acceptance. At this rate, he was going to get the world record.

"You see, Dumbledore?" Phineas Nigellus, a slight smirk on his painted lips, spoke slyly. "Never try to understand the students. They hate it. They would much rather be tragically misunderstood, wallow in self-pity, stew in their own —"

"Shut up or I'm going to use Wite-Out on your eyes," I told Phineas, and he quickly did as told, though his face did pucker.

Harry stopped pacing, standing in front of Dumbledore's office window, staring out at the Quidditch stadium.

"There is no shame in what you are feeling, Harry," Dumbledore said, interlacing his fingers, not looking at my friend; he looked, instead, at Fawkes. "On the contrary... the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength."

"My greatest strength, is it?" Harry's voice shook with his thinly veiled rage and, admittedly, I had no idea what Dumbledore's angle was. "You haven't got a clue.... You don't know..."

"What don't I know?" Dumbledore asked calmly.

I had a whole lineup of jokes in response to that, a lot of them ending or beginning with 'your mom,' but I did have some tact, so I made like a clam and shut up.

Harry whirled around, trembling with rage, "I don't want to talk about how I feel, all right?"

I wondered whether I should be there or not — but I got the impression that there was a reason Dumbledore hadn't asked me to leave yet.

"Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man!" Dumbledore said. Was there a chance he wouldn't be a man now? "This pain is part of being human —"

"THEN — I — DON'T — WANT — TO — BE — HUMAN!" Harry bellowed, hand jerking toward one of Dumbledore's many, many bits of magical machinery. He seized it, flinging it across the room, the silvery metal shattering into a hundred little pieces. The portraits all shouted their displeasure, but Dumbledore sat there, cool and calm as ever. "I DON'T CARE! I'VE HAD ENOUGH, I'VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON'T CARE ANYMORE —" He grabbed the table the instrument had been sitting on, swinging it toward the wall, too. One of the legs rolled beneath Dumbledore's desk, and I stared at it, more than a little shaken by the territory Harry's mind had flung itself into.