“So he only heard—?”
“He heard only the beginning, the part foretelling the birth of a boy in July to parents who had thrice defied Voldemort. Consequently, he could not warn his master that to attack you would be to risk transferring power to you, and marking you as his equal. So Voldemort never knew that there might be danger in attacking you, that it might be wise to wait, to learn more. He did not know that you would have power the Dark Lord knows not—”
“But I don’t!” said Harry, in a strangled voice. “I haven’t any powers he hasn’t got, I couldn’t fight the way he did tonight, I can’t possess people or—or kill them—”
“There is a room in the Department of Mysteries,” interrupted Dumbledore, “that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than the forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside there. It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all. That power took you to save Sirius tonight. That power also saved you from possession by Voldemort, because he could not bear to reside in a body so full of the force he detests. In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you.”
Harry closed his eyes. If he had not gone to save Sirius, Sirius would not have died… More to stave off the moment when he would have to think of Sirius again, Harry asked, without caring much about the answer, “The end of the prophecy… it was something about… neither can live…”
“…while the other survives,” said Dumbledore.
“So,” said Harry, dredging up the words from what felt like a deep well of despair inside him, “so does that mean that… that one of us has got to kill the other one… in the end?”
“Yes,” said Dumbledore.
For a long time, neither of them spoke. Somewhere far beyond the office walls, Harry could hear the sound of voices, students heading down to the Great Hall for an early breakfast, perhaps. It seemed impossible that there could be people in the world who still desired food, who laughed, who neither knew nor cared that Sirius Black was gone for ever. Sirius seemed a million miles away already; even now a part of Harry still believed that if he had only pulled back that veil, he would have found Sirius looking back at him, greeting him, perhaps, with his laugh like a bark…
“I feel I owe you another explanation, Harry,” said Dumbledore hesitantly. “You may, perhaps, have wondered why I never chose you as a prefect? I must confess… that I rather thought… you had enough responsibility to be going on with.”
Harry looked up at him and saw a tear trickling down Dumbledore’s face into his long silver beard.
38. THE SECOND WAR BEGINS
HE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED RETURNS
In a brief statement on Friday night, Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge confirmed that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has returned to this country and is once more active.
“It is with great regret that I must confirm that the wizard styling himself Lord—well, you know who I mean—is alive and among us again,” said Fudge, looking tired and flustered as he addressed reporters. “It is with almost equal regret that we report the mass revolt of the Dementors of Azkaban, who have shown themselves averse to continuing in the Ministry’s employ. We believe the Dementors are currently taking direction from Lord—Thingy.
“We urge the magical population to remain vigilant. The Ministry is currently publishing guides to elementary home and personal defence which will be delivered free to all wizarding homes within the coming month.”
The Minister’s statement was met with dismay and alarm from the wizarding community, which as recently as last Wednesday was receiving Ministry assurances that there was “no truth whatsoever in these persistent rumours that You-Know-Who is operating amongst us once more.”
Details of the events that led to the Ministry turnaround are still hazy, though it is believed that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and a select band of followers (known as Death Eaters) gained entry to the Ministry of Magic itself on Thursday evening.
Albus Dumbledore, newly reinstated Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, reinstated member of the International Confederation of Wizards and reinstated Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, has so far been unavailable for comment. He has insisted over the past year that You-Know-Who is not dead, as was widely hoped and believed, but is recruiting followers once more for afresh attempt to seize power. Meanwhile, the “Boy Who Lived”—
“There you are, Harry, I knew they’d drag you into it somehow,” said Hermione, looking over the top of the paper at him.
They were in the hospital wing. Harry was sitting on the end of Ron’s bed and they were both listening to Hermione read the front page of the Sunday Prophet. Ginny, whose ankle had been mended in a trice by Madam Pomfrey, was curled up at the foot of Hermione’s bed; Neville, whose nose had likewise been returned to its normal size and shape, was in a chair between the two beds; and Luna, who had dropped in to visit, clutching the latest edition of The Quibbler, was reading the magazine upside-down and apparently not taking in a word Hermione was saying.
“He’s the ‘Boy Who Lived’ again now, though, isn’t he?” said Ron darkly. “Not such a deluded show-off any more, eh?”
He helped himself to a handful of Chocolate Frogs from the immense pile on his bedside cabinet, threw a few to Harry, Ginny and Neville and ripped off the wrapper of his own with his teeth. There were still deep welts on his forearms where the brain’s tentacles had wrapped around him. According to Madam Pomfrey, thoughts could leave deeper scarring than almost anything else, though since she had started applying copious amounts of Dr. Ubbly’s Oblivious Unction there seemed to have been some improvement.
“Yes, they’re very complimentary about you now, Harry,” said Hermione, scanning down the article. “‘A lone voice of truth… perceived as unbalanced, yet never wavered in his story… forced to bear ridicule and slander…’ Hmmm,” she said, frowning, “I notice they don’t mention the fact that it was them doing all the ridiculing and slandering in the Prophet…”
She winced slightly and put a hand to her ribs. The curse Dolohov had used on her, though less effective than it would have been had he been able to say the incantation aloud, had nevertheless caused, in Madam Pomfrey’s words, “quite enough damage to be going on with.” Hermione was having to take ten different types of potion every day, was improving greatly, and was already bored with the hospital wing.
“You-Know-Who’s Last Attempt to Take Over, pages two to four, What the Ministry Should Have Told Us, page five, Why Nobody Listened to Albus Dumbledore, pages six to eight, Exclusive Interview with Harry Potter, page nine… Well,” said Hermione, folding up the newspaper and throwing it aside, “it’s certainly given them lots to write about. And that interview with Harry isn’t exclusive, it’s the one that was in The Quibbler months ago…”
“Daddy sold it to them,” said Luna vaguely, turning a page of The Quibbler. “He got a very good price for it, too, so we’re going to go on an expedition to Sweden this summer to see if we can catch a Crumple-Horned Snorkack.”