Imagine being Dumbledore's daughter, and him comforting you after the death of your mother.
It was difficult to focus in class, even in the ones that were being taught by your father, which were usually your favorite. You were biased that way, you knew, but he was an amazing teacher, a fixture of the school, a fixture in your life. Unlike your schoolmates, you had the opportunity to see family every day - but seeing your father, it didn’t fill the hollow spot that was left by your mother’s death.
Nothing would.
You started to fall behind, to skip classes to stay in your dorm, mourning this huge loss. You turned in only half-finished assignments, not having the energy to finish them out completely. Your teachers tried to be understanding, but there was only so far they could allow you to go before your work started getting Poor, Dreadfuls, or even Trolls.
You went to class one day, head low, and only once you had taken your seat did you realize that none of your other classmates were there. The only shadow cast was by your father, who walked over towards your desk.
“It is Thursday, isn’t it?” You asked, puzzled.
“It is, but I’ve sent word that class is cancelled today.” Your father said, his voice rather serious, though his blue eyes still held a trace of that twinkle. He hadn’t taken your mother’s death very well either.
“I wanted to talk to you.”
“You couldn’t have called me to your office?” You asked.
“Would you have come?” He asked, softly. You let out a small sigh, knowing he was right. You had been secluding yourself lately. He held out a small tin of his favorite candies - sherbert lemons - and you took one, having inherited his sweet tooth. “There’s been a lot of worry about you.”
“I’m fi-“
“Of course, of course,” Your father interrupted with a nod. “But - are you sure that there isn’t anything you wish to tell me? That you wish to talk about?”
You felt your mouth go dry, and you had to look away from that eager expression. He just wanted to help. He always just wanted to help. He could see right through you, but you had to go to him, that’s how he always was.
“It’s a lot,” You mumbled. “I - I miss her so much-“
You felt yourself break down, and your father wrapped a tender arm around you, letting you do so. “I miss her too, every day,” Albus sighed. “And it is okay to miss her. It is okay to grieve. It is okay to be angry. All of these feelings are valid. But what you have been doing with them isn’t. Your mother, nor I, would want you to self-destruct like this.”
“I just don’t know how I’m supposed to focus on silly things like charms and potions when I feel this hole deep inside my heart.”
“Your mother was particularly good at charms,” Albus smiled. “Do you feel her with you, when you use one? When you practice for your classes?”
You closed your eyes, and you thought about it for a second. You nodded. “Yes - I think - I do feel her with me then.”
“That’s something you should cultivate. Keep with it. It’s not silly little charms if it’s one of the connections that you have with her.”
“I’ll - I’ll try,” You promised.
“That’s the most that anyone should ever ask for.”
Target Feeling {Albus Dumbledore x Reader One Shot}
Requested by: Anonymous
Wordcount: 2329
Summary: Soulmate universe where when you get hurt, your soulmate does as well. You see this first hand.
The world that you lived in was full of magic. Your parents were quite powerful, well known in the community as peacemakers, trying to prevent war and trying to help those who were affected by it when they could not get it to stop. They were feared because they did what they wanted to do, even if it meant exposing themselves and exposing what they were. A witch, a wizard, and their only child - you. Yes, you. You were brought with them, apparating from continent to continent, getting your education that way before you were old enough to go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. You were a part of the team. Your parents filled cups of water from their wand, using Aguamenti, and you carried them to the starving and dehydrated children in the dusty nations of Africa. You helped to plant the seeds in the land that your parents made fertile by spilling potions over the dirt, turning it into soil. You played with the other kids in the heat while your parents put together structures using magic that would never be wiped out by weather or war. But that wasn’t the magic that you were obsessed with. It was magic of a different kind. The soulmate kind.
When you first noticed a cut on your hand, you went to your parents. You were only six years old, tears in your eyes, scared - not because of the pain but because you had not noticed where you had gotten it. It hadn’t been there when you went to bed. You were sure of that. You thought maybe someone had been sneaking in through your window. Cut you up in the night. You had a child’s imagination, it was the best that you had come up with. The bad guys that your parents were always fighting.
But they sat you down. They ran your fingers through your hair and they tucked you back into bed after bandaging up your hand as gently as they could. Could you still wiggle your fingers - what about your toes - your ears? The questions made you laugh and feel comfortable again. And then they told you the story that was passed down through all of those with magic in their blood. The story that Muggleborns heard from their classmates when they would go to a magical school. The reason for the giggles on so many girls lips and the reason why guys avoided looking at girls eyes when they got hurt. The soulmate story.
Once upon a time, there was a man and a woman and they loved each other very much. It wasn’t a sweet story, truth be told, though it started out like many a fairytale. They loved each other so much that when one of them would get hurt, the other would hurt themself in the exact same way. So determined to be one, so frenzied to be the same. One could not be hurt without the other. And that love, that pain, that created it’s own sort of magic that spread beyond them, spread to their children, to their childrens children, and then throughout all of magic kind until everyone was under the spell. Or curse, depending on how one chose to see it. The soulmate’s pain. Your other half. You could not feel everything that they felt, none of the good, none of the pleasure. Just the pain. And the evidence of it clear upon your skin.
That was the first mark from your soulmate. At least, the first that you noticed. You were a kid. You got bruises all the time from running around or falling against things. You got back up again. You were still at an age where you didn’t realize such things could really hurt. You used to wonder what the first thing your soulmate noticed was. Was it the cuts on legs from the brambles that you ran through? Or could it have been the many times that you’ve fallen and skinned your own knee?
Growing up, you had to appreciate that your soulmate wasn’t the clumsy sort. Like many other people, you would search yourself over each night before going to bed, seeing if there was anything that you missed. And then looked again in the morning. Timezones were a thing. No one said that your soulmate had to be local. You rarely had anything new. You took it as a sign that your soulmate was okay, and moved on with the rest of your night and the rest of your day.
When you got to Hogwarts, there were plenty of people looking over scars, trying to compare. The boys weren’t as open about it as the girls. A couple of lucky people found their soulmates in their teenage years, these couples that held hands and kissed in the hallways and were so utterly, grossly in love. Others just tried to make do. Fell in love with someone else and hoped that their soulmate wouldn’t turn up so they could be happy. You didn’t do either of those things - meet your soulmate or try to make one. You turned towards books and knowledge and the idea of making the world a better place. You didn’t need a husband or wife in order to do that.
You followed in your parents footsteps for years. You helped relief efforts after natural disasters that you and the rest of the wizarding world hadn’t been able to prevent. You made a bit of a name for yourself. Once in a while, a new cut, bruise, scar would form on your skin and you’d give it a moment of thought and then move on. Sometimes you’d get them on your own and have a brief moment of ‘I wonder if they’re looking at it too’.
Eventually, you started to grow a bit tired of the traveling and you were ready to make yourself a home. Not a family, exactly. Though maybe you would get a cat. You never had the time for a pet, so perhaps you’d make some now. You found a lovely flat in Hogsmeade above an inn that was rather dingy looking but the place itself was wonderful after a bit of work. You even got yourself a nice talking position at the school that you used to go to sometimes. To motivate the kids.
And that - that was how you came to meet Albus Dumbledore. Really meet him.
You had seen him before. He had a strong reputation as a great professor. He hadn’t been there when you had been a student, but had come along the year after you had graduated. When you both met inside of his Transfiguration classroom before one of your lectures, you had shaken hands. You were wearing robes. He was wearing a nice suit with a cloak over it. So you had not seen at the time. You had not seen the bruise on his elbow that matched yours from where you had bumped it against the bookshelf in your close quarters that morning.
“Professor Albus Dumbledore, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” He said, a twinkle in those very blue eyes of his. He looked so friendly. So disarming. It made you smile without you having to force it on for politeness sake.
“Y/N Y/L/N,” You introduce, shaking his hand. The moment that you touch you feel a little something. A wistfulness. An if only coming to your mind. If only this man was your soulmate, but someone like him - even if he hadn’t found his, no doubt that he had found someone to at least pass the time with. So you tucked that away into your pocket for another time.
“Well, welcome, feel free to make use of my office, of my classroom,” He said, before the students would start to pile in. “Do you mind if I stick around and watch? I find that learning is never something that you’re too old for.”
“By all means,” You said, giving him a nod. You waved your wand towards your bag and the materials came out and started to arrange themselves - papers neatly sitting on each desk, just waiting for pupils. And when they came in, you would speak. You would give your lecture, and they would listen with rapt attention because it was not coming from a heavy textbook. It was coming from your lips. The knowledge that you had gained. What you had experienced. And how you helped, how you saved yourself, how you saved others.
But there was one moment. A single moment in which you stubbed your toe while you were walking, lecturing. As far as you could tell, none of the students could tell. They probably would have laughed at you or something, in their childish ways, if they had. But your eyes went straight to Albus and you saw that he looked a little uncomfortable where he was standing. He adjusted his foot, his knees bent a little, like he had just taken a hit.
Was that hope a flutter in your chest? More than likely. More than there should be. You continued on with your lesson, ignoring that feeling for as long as you could. But it was difficult, with those blue eyes upon you at all times. Every glance you took in his direction was met with an encouraging smile, or a grimace when you stepped too hard down on the floor and irritated your foot.
After the lecture, you met again, another wave of your wand cleaning the room, all of your things flying back into your bag. “That was really quite interesting, y/n,” He said, helping you to do the latch on your baggage. “If there’s ever anything that I can help you on if you go back on your trials, please, let me know.”
“Oh, I don’t know that I’ll travel again,” You said with a chortle. “But if I do, I’ll be sure to send you an owl, Professor Dumbledore.”
“Please, call me Albus,” He said, with that same easy going smile.
“Alright, Albus,” You nodded. “Well, I should be taking my leave. I do think I have another lecture with the potions class next week about how to mix without wat-” You went to pick up your bag but in your clumsiness, it fell from your hands, falling straight onto your foot which was getting a lot of abuse today.
“Merlin’s beard,” You whispered, with a gasp. And then realized that you were not alone. You were not alone in the room, nor were you alone in crouching over in the pain. Albus was holding onto his desk, his eyes closed, pain written across his face, but it passed quickly. Just as your own did. And now you were looking at him with a shocked expression, mouth open, flubbering like a fish as you put the potential of it all together. “Albus?”
“My apologies,” He said, standing up straighter. He bent low, his back almost at a perfect angle, and picked up your bag for you. “My soulmate must have had an accident.”
“Albus,” You repeated, but he kept on going. Even his voice was charming. The accent not all together too strong. But perhaps he wasn’t as brilliant as people often said that he was.
“If I looked uncomfortable earlier, I assure you that it had nothing to do with you. A stub of the toe, I believe. Needless to say, they are not having the finest day...”
“Albus,” You said once more, this time catching his attention. You both looked at each other in silence. You took hold of your bag, taking it by the handles. It was heavier than it looked. It held a lot, thanks to the charm that you had put on it to make there be almost everlasting room inside. And once you had it held in one hand, you took a risk, something that would either confirm your suspicions ... or make you seem like a crazy person. “Do you - perchance, have a bruise on your right elbow from this morning?”
That’s when it started to sink in. He looked at the bag down towards your shoes, and then he caught your eye once again. He nodded, and brought his hand up to stroke at his growing beard. “And did you, perchance,” He said, another twinkling in his eye when he brought up your own words, “Feel an unfortunately tingling in your fingers last week?”
“I did,” You nodded, your eyebrows furrowing. “What - I’ve been wondering each bloody day what that was about. Did you go to a muggle building and get your fingers caught in an outlet?”
Oh, how Albus started to laugh at that, filling the room with them. “No, not quite,” He slowed down into a chuckle. “A student’s prank got a little out of hand. I used to have that spirit in me myself, when I was at that age. I can’t blame them for it but oh, I still got caught in the crossfire, so they say.”
You were still looking at him with such awe. That was how your hand had felt - the electricity, the elbow, the toe, the bag on the foot, and here he was. After years of searching. After walking these halls for seven years, hoping that maybe you would catch sight of a bruise or something. Anything that matched yours. And you found it as an adult many years later.
“Well, whatever healing your doctor has here used, it’s a godsend. I was nervous I was never going to be able to grab hold of anything again,” You admitted. Another round of chuckles at the shared pain, and then another intense quiet period as it sunk in what this meant for the both of you.
“Y/N...” He said, softly.
“Albus?” You said back.
“Would you like to stay for dinner? The elves make the most wonderful pudding.”
Imagine being Albus Dumbledore’s teaching assistant who he becomes fond of.
“Excuse me, Professor,” You said, going over the notes that he had made for his upcoming class. “Are you sure that you want to hurry into the werewolves for the third years? Some of them haven’t even turned in their assignments for the boggart yet.” You looked up at Albus, who was watching you with a twinkle in his bright blue eyes.
“Please, call me Albus,” He reminded you for the hundredth time. “Perhaps you are right. I want them to have a firm understanding of the boggarts before we continue on,” He hummed to himself. “Good catch, y/n. You are still quite in tune with these students.”
“Well that was me only a few years ago,” You chuckled, putting the notes down upon his desk. “I still remember what it was like, being in your class.”
“Did I ever move too fast for your liking?”
“No, Sir,” You smiled. He gave you that look again, following it up with a wink. “Err- I mean, Albus. But I already had plans to follow in your footsteps then, so I paid close attention.”
“Yes, of course,” He said with a smile, running his hand over the leatherbound book. “And I’ve always paid attention to your progress. Particularly - close - attention.”
Imagine going back in time with Hermione Granger and seeing a young Dumbledore.
If you were going to be stuck in this odd time with your good friend, Hermione Granger, you might as well attempt to enjoy it, shouldn’t you? Hermione had her hand around your wrist, dragging you around the familiar and yet strange walls. The paintings were different, as were some of the statues, making yoou lose your bearings but this - this was definitely Hogwarts.
It was the middle of the night. “I wonder who the Filch of this time was,” You whispered, looking about, taking every opportunity to look around. You just wanted to explore when this rare opportunity was given to you. Hermione just wanted to get back home. “Don’t we want to get caught though? What are they going to do, take points from Gryffindor?”
Hermioned rolled her eyes. “It’s Dumbledore we’re looking for. I think - I think this would be his rooms, back when he was a professor.” She straightened herself out in front of a door that she stopped in front of and gave it a good, loud knock. You rolled your eyes and waited for an old man with a beard to open the door. Albus seemed endlessly ancient after all. But instead you were greeted with-
“Yes?” A young man, curls, freshly shaved face, bright blue eyes. Definitely not what you were expecting.
“We must have the wrong room, no way are you who we’re looking for,” You said, taking the lead, looking this ridiculously handsome professor over. “I mean, you might be who I’m looking for and this is definitely the right room but-” You started, your flirty nature taking over. Hermione nudged you in the ribs, jaw dropped.
“I’m - sorry about her. You are - Albus Dumbledore, aren’t you?” She asked, wide eyes.
“Yes, and how can I help you ladies?” He asked, confusion going across his features as he looked between you two. You looked at Hermione mortified.
“This?” You asked, pointing to him. “This? All of this is? Oh boy. I’m never going to be able to look him in the face again without blushing. Do we really have to go back?”
Imagine reminiscing with Albus Dumbledore about the boring times.
It was nice to be able to sit back with a cup of tea, and your husband, the handsome and charming Albus Dumbledore, and reminisce. These quiet moments were rare with current events happening outside of Hogwarts walls, a war creeping closer and closer to what was meant to be the most secure place in the world. “Do you remember our first date - at that old bookshop?” You asked, sipping from your cup.
“Ahh, yes,” He said, swirling his teaspoon, mixing in the milk and lemon. “I could never forget such a day, my dear. I can still remember the smell of those old books - if only because it returned to me when I stopped into the potion’s classroom and saw they were making Amortentia.”
“And you still smell our first date, after all of this time?” You asked, smiling, flattered greatly by that. “I always find the smell of lemon drops follows the potion, it fills the entire room with it’s sweetness. If only things were so simple now as they had been back then. Where the only fear was a broken heart.”
“It is still broken hearts that we have to fear,” Albus nodded, solemnly. “Breaking from losing loved ones. But we are safe here. I’m never going to let anything happen to you.”
Imagine teaching a young Albus Dumbledore how to dance.
When the Yule ball came around, you had grown excited at the prospect - a magical night full of dancing, of making new friends, of intermingled students throughout the different schools, of happiness and potential romance - of course it was everything that you had dreamed of. It got even better when you volunteered to help to teach the students how to dance, to give them all a bit of confidence when going with their friends and loved ones. But the best thing of all was that Albus Dumbledore, your favorite colleague, had volunteered along with you.
As the day of the lesson came closer, Albus approached you, sitting next to you during one of the dinner’s though his place was usually next to the Headmaster. You smiled over at him as he took the seat, and leaned in when he did so that you could hear what he wanted to say. “I have to admit something to you,” He said, a cheeky little grin.
“Oh?” You asked Albus, raising an eyebrow, setting down your utensils so that you could give him your full attention. “And what’s that?”
“I don’t actually know how to dance,” He said, bright blue eyes sparkling. “So I might need a lesson before hand.”
You got a chuckle out of that one. You hadn’t expected there to be anything that Albus didn’t know how to do. He was a very powerful wizard - being daunted by dancing.
“I suppose I can give you a private lesson, Professor Dumbledore.”
You were the oldest student at the school, being already into your eighteenth year. You had to skip a lot of school due to some pressing family issues, but you were eager to catch up on your last full term at Hogwarts. That meant a lot of tutoring under the great Albus Dumbledore, Transfigurations professor - and quite a handsome man as you had noticed.
And you had been noticed as well, though that completely went against the rules of the school.
It had started slow - glances during class, him touching you to help you with wand movements, taking dinner together in his office during the tutoring sessions. But then it gradually grew into more, but remained secretive lest he lose his position and his prestige.
“Y/n,” He said, after you had completed a rather difficult bit of wandwork. He gave you a smile, the one that only you got to see during the days. “I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you. That really means a lot from you, Albus,” You said, lowering your wand and approached the older gentleman. “Does that mean that I get a prize?”
“Y/N.... just a little while longer...”
“Albus,” You cut him off, knowing that he was talking about going public with the relationship, something you had been bugging him about for a while. “I know the time isn’t right but - how about just a kiss for now?”
