"He could make you see the way the world could be, in spite of the way that it is." - Road to Hell, Hadestown
"Shit!"
The sound of Harry's pain-filled curse makes me jump; I look up from my trunk with a start, knocking the cup of tea to my left and spilling it all over my lap. "Oh, bloody hell!" I wretch my jacket off and soak up the remaining tea, cursing all the while and watching as Harry shoulders our bedroom door open, clutching a bleeding hand. As soon as the door opens there is the crunch of breaking china, followed immediately by the sound of an irritated Harry.
"What the --?"
I throw my tea-stained jacket to the side, vaguely aware of Harry's shouted complaints from the bathroom, and turn my attention to the collection of nick-nacks to my left, caught in the crossfire of the spilt tea; an old Sneakoscope, an Irish flag from the Quidditch World Cup, and finally a tattered piece of parchment, whose handwriting hidden within struck my heart so intensely I could not read it's contents. I unfold it carefully, the parchment translucent and the words running, barely legible; I make out the words so, would you please give me the pleasure of being my girlfriend? Draco Malfoy before they are gone forever.
Harry returns, slamming the bedroom door behind him, and I crumple the soaking parchment in my hand without a second thought. "Shame," I say, grinning at him, "I think you just alerted every Death Eater in England to our location with that display."
He feigns a scowl and casts a look back at the door briefly. "I think Dudley's booby-trapped the house, be careful."
We've spent the morning completely emptying our school trunks for the first time since we packed them six years ago. At the start of each intervening year, we had simply skimmed off the topmost three-quarters of the contents and replaced and updated them, leaving a general layer of debris at the bottom - old quills, single socks that no longer fit, and old love letters. Harry must have cut himself on something hidden in his trunk's depths, and he appears now to be going about the task with much more caution.
He scoffs suddenly. "Haylee, look at this."
He tosses something small in my direction, and upon further inspection I recognize it to be an old badge that flickers feebly between SUPPORT CEDRIC DIGGORY and THE POTTERS SINK. I can't help but laugh, remembering a baby faced Draco wearing this proudly on his robes.
I continue digging through my trunk: an empty bottle of the Draught of Peace, the charm bracelet Draco had gifted me during the Yule Ball buried at the very bottom, beside a gold locket inside which a note signed R.A.B has been hidden.
It takes another hour to empty them completely, throw away the useless items, and sort the remainder into piles according to whether or not we will need them from now on. Our school and Quidditch robes, cauldrons, parchment, quills, and most of our textbooks are in the corner, to be left behind. I wonder what our aunt and uncle will do with them; burn them in the dead of the night, probably, as if they are evidence of some dreadful crime. Our Muggle clothes, Invisibility Cloak, potion-making kit, certain books, and wands have been packed into separate rucksacks; in the front pocket of mine are the Marauder's Map and the locket, given this place of honour not because it is valuable - it's basically worthless - but because of what it had cost to attain it.
This leaves a sizable stack of newspapers sitting on our desk beside our snowy owl, Hedwig: one for each of the days Harry and I have spent at Privet Drive this summer.
I get up off the floor, stretch, and move across to our desk. Hedwig does not move as I begin to flick through the newspapers, throwing them onto the rubbish pile one by one. The owl is asleep, or else faking; she's angry with us about the limited amount of time she is allowed out of her cage at the moment.
As I near the bottom of the pile, I slow down, searching for one in particular that I know arrived shortly after we returned to Privet Drive; I remember that there was a small mention on the front about the resignation of Charity Burbage, the Muggle Studies teacher at Hogwarts. At last, I find it. Turning to page ten, I sink into my desk chair and reread the article I was looking for, with Harry soon appearing at my shoulder.
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 pockmarked 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 publicize d 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 the 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-Amuggle tendency. Indeed, his determined support for Muggle rights gained him many enemies in subsequent years.
In a matter of months, however, Albus' 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 benefited 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, but he was also 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 Walfling, the magical theoretician. Several of his papers found their way into learned publications such as Transfiguration Today, Challenges in Charming, and The Practise 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 duelling 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'sfuneral, 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 the least contact. I wrote to Albus, describing, perhaps insensitively, the wonders of my journey, from narrow escapes from chimaeras 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 frustratingly 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'sdeath, 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 lighthearted. 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 betweenDumbledore 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.
I finish reading but continue to gaze at the picture accompanying the obituary. Dumbledore is wearing his familiar, kindly smile, but as he peers over the top of his half-moon spectacles, he gives the impression, even in newsprint, of X-raying Harry and I. My sadness mingles with humiliation.
I thought we had known Dumbledore quite well, but ever since reading this obituary, I've been forced to recognize that we barely knew him at all. Never once had I imagined Dumbledore's childhood or youth; it is as though he had sprung into being as Harry and I had known him, venerable and silver-haired and old. The idea of a teenage Dumbledore is simply odd, like trying to imagine a stupid Hermione or a friendly Blast-Ended Skrewt.
I never thought to ask Dumbledore about his past. No doubt it would have been strange, impertinent even, but after all, it is common knowledge that he was involved in that legendary duel with Grindelwald, and I had not thought to ask him what that was like, nor about any of his other famous achievements. No, we had always discussed Harry and I, our past, our future, our plans...and it seems to me now, despite the fact that our future is so dangerous and so uncertain, that we have missed irreplaceable opportunities by failing to ask Dumbledore about himself. The only person question we ever asked him is also the only one I suspect he had not answered honestly:
"What do you see when you look in the mirror?"
"I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woollen socks."
After several minutes of thought, I tear the obituary out of The Prophet, fold it carefully, and tuck inside our copy of the first volume of Practical Defensive Magic and Its Use Against the Dark Arts. I throw the rest of the newspaper into the rubbish pile and turn to face the room. It's much tidier. The only things left out of place are today's Daily Prophet, still lying on Harry's bed, and on top of it, a piece of glass.
"What's this?" I cross the room and pick it up carefully, holding it up to the light. All I see is the reflection of my own green eye.
"Sirius' mirror," Harry says, picking up the newspaper which had laid beneath it. "I forgot about it, must have cracked in my trunk." He holds his hand up. "It's what I cut myself on."
I examine our godfather's gift, feeling a hint of sadness at seeing it destroyed. The sadness increases twice fold when I think about Sirius and Dad's role in what we have to do. They said they would come with us, no negotiations, but I can't bear the thought of them sacrificing themselves for us, like so many have before. And even so, how can they join us on this journey with no idea about what we're seeking? Dumbledore only permitted us to tell Hermione, Ron, and Riley about the Horcruxes. Some small part of me thinks that blindly following this order is stupid, as Dad and Sirius' aid would surely be invaluable. Yet, on the other hand, I have to have faith in Dumbledore.
"Have you read this?" Harry says, drawing me away from my sinister thoughts. He's holding up today's Prophet, opened on a page which once against depicts Dumbledore's image. He begins reading out loud:
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 lifelong 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 headmaster? 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, page13, inside.
Harry rips open the paper to page thirteen and continues reading furiously.
In-person, Rita Skeeter is much warmer and softer than her famously ferocious quill-portraits might suggest. Greeting me in the hallway of her cozy home, she leads me straight into the kitchen for a cup of tea, a slice of pound cake and, it goes without saying, a steaming vat of freshest gossip."Well, of course, Dumbledore is a biographer's dream," says Skeeter. "Such a long, full life. I'm sure my book will be the first of very, very many."
Skeeter was certainly quick off the mark. Her nine-hundred-page book was completed a mere four weeks after Dumbledore's mysterious death in June. I ask her how she managed this superfast feat."Oh, when you've been a journalist as long as I have, working to a deadline is second nature. I knew that the Wizarding world was clamouring for the full story and I wanted to be the first to meet that need."
I mention the recent, widely publicized remarks of Elphias Doge, Special Advisor to the Wizengamot and longstanding friend of Albus Dumbledore's, that "Skeeter's book contains less fact than a Chocolate Frog card."
Skeeter throws back her head and laughs."Darling Dodgy! I remember interviewing him a few years back about merpeople rights, bless him. Completely gaga, seemed to think we were sitting at the bottom of Lake Windermere, kept telling me to watch out for trout."
And yet Elphias Doge's accusations of inaccuracy have been echoed in many places. Does Skeeter really feel that four short weeks have been enough to gain a full picture of Dumbledore's long and extraordinary life?
"Oh, my dear," beams Skeeter, rapping me affectionately across the knuckles, "you know as well as I do how much information can be generated by a fat bag of Galleons, a refusal to hear the word 'no,' and a nice sharp Quick-Quotes Quill! People were queuing to dish the dirt on Dumbledore anyway. Not everyone thought he was so wonderful, you know — he trod on an awful lot of important toes. But old Dodgy Doge can get off his high hippogriff, because I've had access to a source most journalists would swap their wands for, one who has never spoken in public before and who was close to Dumbledore during the most turbulent and disturbing phase of his youth."
The advance publicity for Skeeter's biography has certainly suggested that there will be shocks in store for those who believe Dumbledore to have led a blameless life. What were the biggest surprises she uncovered, I ask?
"Now, come off it, Betty, I'm not giving away all the highlights before anybody's bought the book!" laughs Skeeter. "But I can promise that anybody who still thinks Dumbledore was white as his beard is in for a rude awakening! Let's just say that nobody hearing him rage against You-Know-Who would have dreamed that he dabbled in the Dark Arts himself in his youth! And for a wizard who spent his later years pleading for tolerance, he wasn't exactly broad-minded when he was younger! Yes, Albus Dumbledore had an extremely murky past, not to mention that very fishy family, which he worked so hard to keep hushed up."
I ask whether Skeeter is referring to Dumbledore'sbrother, Aberforth, whose conviction by the Wizengamot for misuse of magic caused a minor scandal fifteen years ago.
"Oh, Aberforth is just the tip of the dung heap," laughs Skeeter. "No, no, I'm talking about much worse than a brother with a fondness for fiddling about with goats, worse even than the Mugglemaiming father — Dumbledore couldn't keep either of them quiet anyway, they were both charged by the Wizengamot. No, it's the mother and the sister that intrigued me, and a little digging uncovered a positive nest of nastiness — but, as I say, you'll have to wait for chapters nine to twelve for full details. All I can say now is, it's no wonder Dumbledore never talked about how his nose got broken."
Family skeletons notwithstanding does Skeeterdeny the brilliance that led to Dumbledore's many magical discoveries?"He had brains," she concedes, "although many now question whether he could really take full credit for all of his supposed achievements. As I reveal in chapter sixteen, Ivor Dillonsby claims he had already discovered eight uses of dragon's blood whenDumbledore 'borrowed' his papers."
But the importance of some of Dumbledore'sachievements cannot, I venture, be denied. What of his famous defeat of Grindelwald?
"Oh, now, I'm glad you mentioned Grindelwald," says Skeeter with a tantalizing smile. "I'm afraid those who go dewy-eyed over Dumbledore's spectacular victory must brace themselves for a bombshell — or perhaps a Dungbomb. Very dirty business indeed. All I'll say is, don't be so sure that there really was the spectacular duel of legend. After they've read my book, people may be forced to conclude that Grindelwald simply conjured a white handkerchief from the end of his wand and came quietly!"
Skeeter refuses to give any more away on this intriguing subject, so we turn instead to the relationship that will undoubtedly fascinate her readers more than any other."Oh yes," says Skeeter, nodding briskly, "I devote an entire chapter to the whole Potter-Dumbledorerelationship. 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 the Potters from the word go. Whether that was really in their best interests — well, we'll see. It's certainly an open secret that Harry and Haylee Potter have had a most troubled adolescence."
I ask whether Skeeter is still in touch with Harry and Haylee Potter, whom she so famously interviewed last year: a breakthrough piece in which the Potters spoke exclusively of their conviction that You-Know-Who had returned.
"Oh, yes, we've developed a close bond," says Skeeter. "The poor Potters have few real friends and we met at one of the most testing moments of their lives — the Triwizard Tournament, and return of their father and godfather. I am probably one of the only people alive who can say that they know the real Harry and Haylee Potter."
Which leads us neatly to the many rumours still circulating about Dumbledore's final hours. Does Skeeter believe that the Potters were there when Dumbledore died?
"Well, I don't want to say too much — it's all in the book — but eyewitnesses inside Hogwarts castle saw the Potters running away from the scene moments after Dumbledore fell, jumped, or was pushed. The Potters later gave evidence against Severus Snape, a man against whom they have a notorious grudge. Is everything as it seems? That is for the Wizarding community to decide — once they've read my book."
On that intriguing note, I take my leave. There can be no doubt that Skeeter has quilled an instant bestseller. Dumbledore's legions of admirers, meanwhile, may well be trembling at what is soon to emerge about their hero.
Harry finishes reading, but we remain in silence for a few moments. Revulsion and fury rise in me like vomit; Harry balls up the newspaper and throws it, with all his force, at the wall, where it joins the rest of the rubbish heaped around our overflowing bin.
"A whole chapter dedicated to the Potter-Dumbledore relationship!" I repeat incredulously as he begins to pace blindly, opening drawers and picking up books only to replace them on the same piles, barely conscious of what he's doing. "We should have let Hermione squash her when we had the chance! I mean, sinister!?"
"Lies!" Harry bellows, and through the window, I see the next-door neighbour, who has paused to restart his lawnmower, look up nervously.
He sits down beside me once more, radiating anger. I clutch the broken bit of mirror tightly, turning it over my fingers, thinking, thinking of Dumbledore and the lies Skeeter is defaming him with...
A flash of brightest blue. I freeze, and this time it is my finger which the jagged edge slices. "Did you see that?" I ask feverishly, nursing my now bleeding finger, "or was that my imagination?"
Harry looks over his shoulder, but there is nothing but the sickly peach colour of Aunt Petunia's choosing: there is nothing blue to reflect. "Blue," he says quietly, "but how?"
I into the mirror once more, but see nothing but my own bright green eye looking back at me.
We must have imagined it, there are no other explanations. If there's one thing that I'm absolutely certain about, it is that the bright blue eyes of Albus Dumbledore will never pierce us again.