In Memoriam, the book read.
Was this about Professor Burbage or Dumbledore? people wondered.
Harry was bleeding. Clutching his right hand in his left and swearing under his breath, he shouldered open his bedroom door. There was a crunch of breaking china: He had trodden on a cup of cold tea that had been sitting on the floor outside his bedroom door.
"Who–?" Ron wondered.
Harry shrugged.
Possibly the cup of tea was Dudley's idea of a clever booby trap.
"Makes sense." Ron and Hermione grumbled.
Harry looked at them gratefully. I know Dudley would never change. I was hoping he would after the Dementor attack, but maybe some people don't change. He wondered.
Making a mental note to ask Hermione how it was done, he used a large wad of toilet paper to mop up as much of the tea as he could, before returning to his beroom and slamming the door behind him.
Hermione smiled. "Maybe you should learn it yourself, Harry. Me and Ron aren't going to baby you and hold your hand."
The bluntness was surprising and Harry and Ron looked at her incredulously.
"What she said." Ron said.
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, guys." Harry said sarcastically.
He now proceeded a little more cautiously. Kneeling down beside the trunk again, he groped around in the bottom and, after retrieving an old badge that flickered feebly between Support Cedric Diggory and Potter Stinks, a cracked and worn-out Sneakoscope, and a gold locket inside which a note signed R.A.B. had been hidden,
Everyone growled at the mention of the Horcrux.
His school and Quidditch robes, cauldron, parchment, quills, and most of his textbooks were piled in a corner, to be left behind.
While they expected him to abandon his school supplies, they did not expect him to abandon anything to do with Quidditch, knowing that Harry was obsessed with the sport.
His Muggle clothing, Invisibility Cloak, potion-making kit, certain books, the photograph album Hagrid had once given him, a stack of letters, and his wand had been repacked into an old rucksack. In a front pocket were the Marauder's Map and the locket with the note signed R.A.B. inside it. The locket was accorded this place of honor not because it was valuable — in all usual senses it was worthless — but because of what it had cost to attain it.
"Why are you keeping the map? You won't be needing it since you aren't going back to Hogwarts." Remus asked, intrigued.
"To keep an eye on Ginny." Harry said, blushing.
Ginny giggled and kissed Harry, just like she did after the Quidditch match in book six. All the women except Umbridge cooed and Ron crossed his arms, taken aback. He was comfortable with it but wasn't comfortable with the two of them snogging or making out.
"My godson, the charmer of the ladies." Sirius said.
"Sirius, I am not a ladies' man. I am Ginny's man." Harry said in a deep smile, giving a sheepish smile and Sirius, Remus, and the other adults facepalmed, cringing.
Ginny smiled. "I think it's sweet."
This left a sizable stack of newspapers sitting on his desk beside his snowy owl, Hedwig: one for each of the days Harry had spent at Privet Drive this summer.
Harry got a pit in his stomach like something bad was going to happen, but passed it off. It was war, bad things happen in wars, things like Sirius dying, Hogwarts not being safe, Draco trying all year to kill Dumbledore, Ron getting poisoned, and Katie almost dying from the cursed necklace, Severus killing Dumbledore, Death Eaters invading Hogwarts. Hell, even what seems to be recently, with the Ministry being infiltrated by Voldemort's forces.
Albus Dumbledore Remembered by Elphias Doge
I met Albus Dumbledore at the age of eleven, on our first day at Hogwarts. Our mutual attraction was undoubtedly due to the fact that we both felt ourselves to be outsiders. I had contracted dragon pox shortly before arriving at school,
and while I was no longer contagious, my pock-marked visage and greenish hue did not encourage many to approach me. For his part, Albus had arrived at Hogwarts under the burden of unwanted notoriety. Scarcely a year previously, his father, Percival, had been convicted of a savage and well-publicized attack upon three young Muggles.
Albus never attempted to deny that his father (who was to die in Azkaban) had committed this crime; on the contrary, when I plucked up courage to ask him, he assured me that he knew his father to be guilty. Beyond that, Dumbledore refused to speak of the sad business, though many attempted to make him do so. Some, indeed, were disposed to praise his father's action and assumed that Albus too was a Muggle-hater. They could not have been more mistaken: As anybody who knew Albus would attest, he never revealed the remotest anti-Muggle tendency. Indeed, his determined support for Muggle rights gained him many enemies in subsequent years.
In a matter of months, however, Albus's own fame had begun to eclipse that of his father. By the end of his first year he would never again be known as the son of a Muggle-hater, but as nothing more or less than the most brilliant student ever seen at the school. Those of us who were privileged to be his friends benefitted from his example, not to mention his help and encouragement, with which he was always generous. He confessed to me in later life that he knew even then that his greatest pleasure lay in teaching.
He not only won every prize of note that the school offered, he was soon in regular correspondence with the most notable magical names of the day, including Nicolas Flamel, the celebrated alchemist; Bathilda Bagshot, the noted historian; and Adalbert Waffling, the magical theoretician. Several of his papers found their way into learned publications such as Transfiguration Today, Challenges in Charming, and The Practical Potioneer. Dumbledore's future career seemed likely to be meteoric, and the only question that remained was when he would become Minister of Magic. Though it was often predicted in later years that he was on the point of taking the job, however, he never had Ministerial ambitions. Three years after we had started at Hogwarts, Albus's brother, Aberforth, arrived at school. They were not alike; Aberforth was never bookish and, unlike Albus, preferred to settle arguments by dueling rather than through reasoned discussion. However, it is quite wrong to suggest, as some have, that the brothers were not friends. They rubbed along as comfortably as two such different boys could do. In fairness to Aberforth, it must be admitted that living in Albus's shadow cannot have been an altogether comfortable experience. Being continually outshone was an occupational hazard of being his friend and cannot have been any more pleasurable as a brother.
When Albus and I left Hogwarts we intended to take the then-traditional tour of the world together, visiting and observing foreign wizards, before pursuing our separate careers. However, tragedy intervened. On the very eve of our trip, Albus's mother, Kendra, died, leaving Albus the head, and sole breadwinner, of the family. I postponed my departure long enough to pay my respects at Kendra's funeral, then left for what was now to be a solitary journey. With a younger brother and sister to care for, and little gold left to them, there could no longer be any question of Albus accompanying me. That was the period of our lives when we had least contact. I wrote to Albus, describing, perhaps insensitively, the wonders of my journey, from narrow escapes from chimeras in Greece to the experiments of the Egyptian alchemists. His letters told me little of his day-to-day life, which I guessed to be frustratedingly dull for such a brilliant wizard. Immersed in my own experiences, it was with horror that I heard, toward the end of my year's travels, that yet another tragedy had struck the Dumbledores: the death of his sister, Ariana.
Though Ariana had been in poor health for a long time, the blow, coming so soon after the loss of their mother, had a profound effect on both of her brothers. All those closest to Albus — and I count myself one of that lucky number — agree that Ariana's death, and Albus's feeling of personal responsibility for it (though, of course, he was guiltless), left their mark upon him forevermore.
I returned home to find a young man who had experienced a much older person's suffering. Albus was more reserved than before, and much less light-hearted. To add to his misery, the loss of Ariana had led, not to a renewed closeness between Albus and Aberforth, but to an estrangement. (In time this would lift — in later years they reestablished, if not a close relationship, then certainly a cordial one.) However, he rarely spoke of his parents or of Ariana from then on, and his friends learned not to mention them.
Other quills will describe the triumphs of the following years. Dumbledore's innumerable contributions to the store of wizarding knowledge, including his discovery of the twelve uses of dragon's blood, will benefit generations to come, as will the wisdom he displayed in the many judgments he made while Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot. They say, still, that no wizarding duel ever matched that between Dumbledore and Grindelwald in 1945. Those who witnessed it have written of the terror and the awe they felt as they watched these two extraordinary wizards do battle. Dumbledore's triumph, and its consequences for the wizarding world, are considered a turning point in magical history to match the introduction of the International Statute of Secrecy or the downfall of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
Albus Dumbledore was never proud or vain; he could find something to value in anyone, however apparently insignificant or wretched, and I believe that his early losses endowed him with great humanity and sympathy. I shall miss his friendship more than I can say, but my loss is as nothing compared to the wizarding world's. That he was the most inspiring and the best loved of all Hogwarts headmasters cannot be in question. He died as he lived: working always for the greater good and, to his last hour, as willing to stretch out a hand to a small boy with dragon pox as he was on the day that I met him.
Everyone was shocked. Although it revealed an extensive bit of knowledge about Dumbledore's past, like the fact that his father attacked Muggles and was sent to Azkaban for it. Hermione jotted down the question: Why is Dumbledore's past so mysterious?
Nobody noticed Dumbledore's sad expression at the mention of his mother and sister's death, but not just a sad expression, a guilty expression, as if he was responsible for it. Nobody questioned it.
"What do you see when you look in the mirror?"
"I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks."
Harry remembered that and knew it was not true. He had a feeling Dumbledore was not being truthful that night.
Dumbledore knew that what he saw in the mirror was Grindelwald and him in their past, which is why he didn't tell anyone. True, Minerva, Severus, and Aberforth knew, but besides them, nobody else knew. And he intended to keep it that way.
Dumbledore — The Truth at Last?
Coming next week, the shocking story of the flawed genius considered by many to be the greatest wizard of his generation. Stripping away the popular image of serene, silver-bearded wisdom, Rita Skeeter reveals the disturbed childhood, the lawless youth, the life-long feuds, and the guilty secrets that Dumbledore carried to his grave. WHY was the man tipped to be Minister of Magic content to remain a mere head-master? WHAT was the real purpose of the secret organization known as the Order of the Phoenix? HOW did Dumbledore really meet his end?
The answers to these and many more questions are explored in the explosive new biography, The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, by Rita Skeeter, exclusively interviewed by Betty Braithwaite, page 13, inside.
Everyone rolled their eyes. The book was probably rubbish and was full of propaganda against Dumbledore, especially considering the fact that the Ministry was infiltrated by Voldemort and his Death Eaters.
"Oh yes," says Skeeter, nodding briskly, "I devote an entire chapter to the whole Potter-Dumbledore relationship. It's been called unhealthy, even sinister. Again, your readers will have to buy my book for the whole story, but there is no question that Dumbledore took an unnatural interest in Potter from the word go. Whether that was really in the boy's best interests — well, we'll see. It's certainly an open secret that Potter has had a most troubled adolescence."
Everyone rolled their eyes at this. Harry was a nice boy, just a bit emotionally damaged.
He had imagined it, there was no other explanation; imagined it, because he had been thinking of his dead headmaster. If anything was certain, it was that the bright blue eyes of Albus Dumbledore would never pierce him again.
Harry cried.
"We'll stop Voldemort, mate, and end the war. For Dumbledore." Ron said.
"For Dumbledore." Hermione repeated.
"For Dumbledore. And, for Sirius and Cedric." Harry said.