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“Hello Harry,” Dumbledore said as Harry closed to door to the study behind him. “Please, sit.”
Harry did so, facing Dumbledore across his desk, and saw that the Pensieve wasn’t out. Dumbledore, perhaps noticing him glancing around the room, said, “I’ve asked you here tonight not to talk about Horcruxes or Voldemort’s past, but to discuss something of a more… personal nature.”
Harry stayed silent, unsure if he was meant to respond. After a moment Dumbledore sighed, and spoke again. “There is something I have been avoiding telling you, because it is not pleasant, and I have been reluctant to lay any more upon your shoulders. But you deserve to know, and as was made apparent last year, keeping information from you, however painful it is, will not benefit you in the long run.”
Harry’s emotions warred between righteous indignation and creeping dread. Dumbledore had promised he would tell Harry everything, and now he was admitting he hadn’t. But Dumbledore was speaking as if what he was going to say was as bad as the truth of the prophecy, and Harry found a part of himself wishing he didn’t have to know.
“You have asked, several times now, about the condition of my right hand,” Dumbledore continued, shaking back his sleeve slightly as if to demonstrate, "and every time I refused an answer.” Dumbledore paused, as if steeling himself for his next words. “I came into contact with a curse over the summer. It’s been contained to my hand, but only for the time being. The curse will continue to strengthen and spread, and will, in the not too distant future, kill me.”
Harry felt strangely disconnected from his surroundings as he processed Dumbledore’s words, almost like the gap between sustaining an injury and actually feeling the pain. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out, and he had to close it to try to swallow down the lump in his throat before trying again.
“How long do you have?” Harry asked, willing his voice not to waver, as if feigning normality would make the news less devastating.
“Perhaps six months. Probably less,” Dumbledore answered, and Harry found that he couldn’t bear looking at him, and dropped his gaze to his lap. “I’m very sorry, Harry.”
The horrible absurdity of that statement snapped Harry out of his numbness. “You’re sorry? I should be saying that, you’re the one who’s -”
But the last word caught in his throat, and he suddenly stood up and walked over to the window looking out on the school grounds.
“I think we both know that in many ways, death is a greater tragedy to those who are left behind,” Dumbledore said gently. “Especially in this case, because I am an old man who has lived a full life, while you have already lost so much.”
Harry felt tears burn at his eyes, and tried furiously to blink them away, even though his back was to Dumbledore. He heard footsteps approaching and felt as he had at the end of last year, after Sirius had died, wanting only to run far far away and never stop, but once again there was nowhere for him to go.
“It’s alright to be upset,” Dumbledore said as he drew up behind Harry, and lightly placed his hand - presumably his uninjured one, not the cause of all this - on Harry’s shoulder.
That touch proved to be Harry’s breaking point. A sob ripped its way out of his throat, and then another. Dumbledore’s grip tightened and Harry instinctively turned around, and found Dumbledore’s arms wrapping around him. In other circumstances Harry would have been profoundly embarrassed by the contact, but now he was too consumed by shock and grief to do anything but cry into Dumbledore’s chest.
After an indeterminate amount of time, Harry’s tears dried up and he pulled away from Dumbledore. Dumbledore followed his lead and returned to his desk, giving Harry a chance to wipe his face dry. When he had finished he saw that Dumbledore had conjured a tea tray on his desk and had sat down. Harry followed suit and took the offered cup of tea, adding milk and sugar mostly for something to do with his hands.
They sat in a silence that, while not easy, wasn’t horribly uncomfortable either, for several minutes until Harry cleared his throat and asked, “Does anyone else know?”
“No,” Dumbledore replied. “And I must ask that you keep it that way, as the news would doubtlessly embolden Voldemort and his supporters.”
“Not even Ron and Hermione, sir?” Dumbledore had allowed him to tell them about the Horcruxes, after all, and had even encouraged that he tell them about the prophecy.
Dumbledore looked thoughtful. “I think if they can be trusted to know about Horcruxes, they can be trusted with this.”
Harry nodded, imagining their reactions of sadness and pity, and for a moment he was tempted to keep them in the dark. But lying to them would be no less emotionally taxing, he knew, and would only make the… inevitable, when it happened, worse.
Then Harry thought more about Dumbledore’s previous answer, that no one else knew - he hadn’t even told friends, family? He had mentioned having a brother, Harry dimly remembered, several years ago.
But asking about that would have been far too personal and prying. Harry sat in silence a little bit more before admitting, “I don’t really know what to say.”
“I too find myself rather at a loss for words,” Dumbledore replied. “Perhaps there is never anything to say in situations like this, other than ‘I wish we had more time.’”
Harry nodded jerkily, trying to swallow down the lump in his throat that had reappeared. Still, he felt compelled to add something else. “I am sorry. And not just because I’ll miss you.”
He didn’t know how to put into words how unfair it was that Dumbledore had to spend the last months of his life knowing death was coming, or how much Harry already dreaded having to say goodbye. But he thought Dumbledore might understand anyway, because his voice sounded slightly thick when he said, “Thank you, Harry.”