Can you forgive me?” he said. “Can you forgive me for not…

““Can you forgive me?” he said. “Can you forgive me for not trusting you? For not telling you? Harry, I only feared that you would fail as I had failed. I only dreaded that you would make my mistakes. I crave your pardon, Harry. I have known, for some time now, that you are the better man.” “What are you talking about?” asked Harry, startled by Dumbledore’s tone, by the sudden tears in his eyes. “The Hallows, the Hallows,” murmured Dumbledore. “A desperate man’s dream!” “But they’re real!” “Real, and dangerous, and a lure for fools,” said Dumbledore. “And I was such a fool. But you know, don’t you? I have no secrets from you anymore. You know.” “What do I know?” Dumbledore turned his whole body to face Harry, and tears still sparkled in the brilliantly blue eyes. “Master of death, Harry, master of Death! Was I better, ultimately, than Voldemort?” “Of course you were,” said Harry. “Of course--how can you ask that? You never killed if you could avoid it!” “True, true,” said Dumbledore, and he was like a child seeking reassurance. “Yet I too sought a way to conquer death, Harry.” “Not the way he did,” said Harry. After all his anger at Dumbledore, how odd it was to sit here, beneath the high, vaulted ceiling, and defend Dumbledore from himself. “Hallows, not Horcruxes.” “Hallows,” murmured Dumbledore, “not Horcruxes. Precisely.””

— J.K. Rowling