Harry Potter and the Deathly HallowsBy J. K. RowlingThe dedication of this book is split seven ways.To NeilTo JessicaTo DavidTo KenzieTo DiTo AnneAnd to YouIf you have stuck with Harry until the very end.

Chapter OneThe Dark Lord AscendingThe two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlitlane. For a second they stood quite still, wands directed at each other's chests; then,recognizing each other, they stowed their wands beneath their cloaks and started walkingbriskly in the same direction."News?" asked the taller of the two."The best," replied Severus Snape.The lane was bordered on the left by wild, low-growing brambles, on the right by a high,neatly manicured hedge. The men's long cloaks flapped around their ankles as theymarched."Thought I might be late," said Yaxley, his blunt features sliding in and out of sight asthe branches of overhanging trees broke the moonlight. "It was a little trickier than Iexpected. But I hope he will be satisfied. You sound confident that your reception will begood?"Snape nodded, but did not elaborate. They turned right, into a wide driveway that ledoff the lane. The high hedge curved into them, running off into the distance beyond thepair of imposing wrought-iron gates barring the men’s way. Neither of them broke step:In silence both raised their left arms in a kind of salute and passed straight through, asthough the dark metal was smoke.The yew hedges muffled the sound of the men’s footsteps. There was a rustlesomewhere to their right: Yaxley drew his wand again pointing it over his companion’shead, but the source of the noise proved to be nothing more than a pure-white peacock,strutting majestically along the top of the hedge.“He always did himself well, Lucius. Peacocks …” Yaxley thrust his wand backunder his cloak with a snort.A handsome manor house grew out of the darkness at the end of the straight drive,lights glinting in the diamond paned downstairs windows. Somewhere in the dark gardenbeyond the hedge a fountain was playing. Gravel crackled beneath their feet as Snape andYaxley sped toward the front door, which swung inward at their approach, thoughnobody had visibly opened it.The hallway was large, dimly lit, and sumptuously decorated, with a magnificentcarpet covering most of the stone floor. The eyes of the pale-faced portraits on the wallfollowed Snape and Yaxley as they strode past. The two men halted at a heavy woodendoor leading into the next room, hesitated for the space of a heartbeat, then Snape turnedthe bronze handle.The drawing room was full of silent people, sitting at a long and ornate table. Theroom’s usual furniture had been pushed carelessly up against the walls. Illuminationcame from a roaring fire beneath a handsome marble mantelpiece surmounted by a gildedmirror. Snape and Yaxley lingered for a moment on the threshold. As their eyes grewaccustomed to the lack of light, they were drawn upward to the strangest feature of thescene: an apparently unconscious human figure hanging upside down over the table,revolving slowly as if suspended by an invisible rope, and reflected in the mirror and inthe bare, polished surface of the table below. None of the people seated underneath thissingular sight were looking at it except for a pale young man sitting almost directly belowit. He seemed unable to prevent himself from glancing upward every minute or so.“Yaxley. Snape,” said a high, clear voice from the head of the table. “You arevery nearly late.”The speaker was seated directly in front of the fireplace, so that it was difficult, atfirst, for the new arrivals to make out more than his silhouette. As they drew nearer,however, his face shone through the gloom, hairless, snakelike, with slits for nostrils andgleaming red eyes whose pupils were vertical. He was so pale that he seemed to emit a

pearly glow.“Severus, here,” said Voldemort, indicating the seat on his immediate right.“Yaxley – beside Dolohov.”The two men took their allotted places. Most of the eyes around the tablefollowed Snape, and it was to him that Voldemort spoke first.“So?”“My Lord, the Order of the Phoenix intends to move Harry Potter from his currentplace of safety on Saturday next, at nightfall.”The interest around the table sharpened palpably: Some stiffened, others fidgeted,all gazing at Snape and Voldemort.“Saturday … at nightfall,” repeated Voldemort. His red eyes fastened uponSnape’s black ones with such intensity that some of the watchers looked away, apparentlyfearful that they themselves would be scorched by the ferocity of the gaze. Snape,however, looked calmly back into Voldemort’s face and, after a moment or two,Voldemort’s lipless mouth curved into something like a smile.“Good. Very good. And this information comes –““ – from the source we discussed,” said Snape.“My Lord.”Yaxley had leaned forward to look down the long table at Voldemort and Snape.All faces turned to him.“My Lord, I have heard differently.”Yaxley waited, but Voldemort did not speak, so he went on, “Dawlish, the Auror,let slip that Potter will not be moved until the thirtieth, the night before the boy turnsseventeen.”Snape was smiling.“My source told me that there are plans to lay a false trail; this must be it. Nodoubt a Confundus Charm has been placed upon Dawlish. It would not be the first time;he is known to be susceptible.”“I assure you, my Lord, Dawlish seemed quite certain,” said Yaxley.“If he has been Confunded, naturally he is certain,” said Snape. “I assure you,Yaxley, the Auror Office will play no further part in the protection of Harry Potter. TheOrder believes that we have infiltrated the Ministry.”“The Order’s got one thing right, then, eh?” said a squat man sitting a shortdistance from Yaxley; he gave a wheezy giggle that was echoed here and there along thetable.Voldemort did not laugh. His gaze had wandered upward to the body revolvingslowly overhead, and he seemed to be lost in thought.“My Lord,” Yaxley went on, “Dawlish believes an entire party of Aurors will beused to transfer the boy –“Voldemort held up a large white hand, and Yaxley subsided at once, watchingresentfully as Voldemort turned back to Snape.“Where are they going to hide the boy next?”“At the home of one of the Order,” said Snape. “The place, according to thesource, has been given every protection that the Order and Ministry together couldprovide. I think that there is little chance of taking him once he is there, my Lord, unless,of course, the Ministry has fallen before next Saturday, which might give us the

opportunity to discover and undo enough of the enchantments to break through the rest.”“Well, Yaxley?” Voldemort called down the table, the firelight glinting strangelyin his red eyes. “Will the Ministry have fallen by next Saturday?”Once again, all heads turned. Yaxley squared his shoulders.“My Lord, I have good news on that score. I have – with difficulty, and after greateffort – succeeded in placing an Imperius Curse upon Pius Thicknesse.”Many of those sitting around Yaxley looked impressed; his neighbor, Dolohov, aman with a long, twisted face, clapped him on the back.“It is a start,” said Voldemort. “But Thicknesse is only one man. Scrimgeour mustbe surrounded by our people before I act. One failed attempt on the Minister’s life willset me back a long way.”“Yes – my Lord, that is true – but you know, as Head of the Department ofMagical Law Enforcement, Thicknesse has regular contact not only with the Ministerhimself, but also with the Heads of all the other Ministry departments. It will, I think, beeasy now that we have such a high-ranking official under our control, to subjugate theothers, and then they can all work together to bring Scrimgeour down.”“As long as our friend Thicknesse is not discovered before he has converted therest,” said Voldemort. “At any rate, it remains unlikely that the Ministry will be minebefore next Saturday. If we cannot touch the boy at his destination, then it must be donewhile he travels.”“We are at an advantage there, my Lord,” said Yaxley, who seemed determined toreceive some portion of approval. “We now have several people planted within theDepartment of Magical Transport. If Potter Apparates or uses the Floo Network, we shallknow immediately.”“He will not do either,” said Snape. “The Order is eschewing any form oftransport that is controlled or regulated by the Ministry; they mistrust everything to dowith the place.”“All the better,” said Voldemort. “He will have to move in the open. Easier totake, by far.”Again, Voldemort looked up at the slowly revolving body as he went on, “I shallattend to the boy in person. There have been too many mistakes where Harry Potter isconcerned. Some of them have been my own. That Potter lives is due more to my errorsthan to his triumphs.”The company around the table watched Voldemort apprehensively, each of them,by his or her expression, afraid that they might be blamed for Harry Potter’s continuedexistence. Voldemort, however, seemed to be speaking more to himself than to any ofthem, still addressing the unconscious body above him.“I have been careless, and so have been thwarted by luck and chance, thosewreckers of all but the best-laid plans. But I know better now. I understand those thingsthat I did not understand before. I must be the one to kill Harry Potter, and I shall be.”At these words, seemingly in response to them, a sudden wail sounded, a terrible,drawn-out cry of misery and pain. Many of those at the table looked downward, startled,for the sound had seemed to issue from below their feet.“Wormtail,” said Voldemort, with no change in his quiet, thoughtful tone, andwithout removing his eyes from the revolving body above, “have I not spoken to youabout keeping our prisoner quiet?”

“Yes, m-my Lord,” gasped a small man halfway down the table, who had beensitting so low in his chair that it appeared, at first glance, to be unoccupied. Now hescrambled from his seat and scurried from the room, leaving nothing behind him but acurious gleam of silver.“As I was saying,” continued Voldemort, looking again at the tense faces of hisfollowers, “I understand better now. I shall need, for instance, to borrow a wand from oneof you before I go to kill Potter.”The faces around him displayed nothing but shock; he might have announced thathe wanted to borrow one of their arms.“No volunteers?” said Voldemort. “Let’s see … Lucius, I see no reason for you tohave a wand anymore.”Lucius Malfoy looked up. His skin appeared yellowish and waxy in the firelight,and his eyes were sunken and shadowed. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.“My Lord?”“Your wand, Lucius. I require your wand.”“I …”Malfoy glanced sideways at his wife. She was staring straight ahead, quite as paleas he was, her long blonde hair hanging down her back, but beneath the table her slimfingers closed briefly on his wrist. At her touch, Malfoy put his hand into his robes,withdrew a wand, and passed it along to Voldemort, who held it up in front of his redeyes, examining it closely.“What is it?”“Elm, my Lord,” whispered Malfoy.“And the core?”“Dragon – dragon heartstring.”“Good,” said Voldemort. He drew out his wand and compared the lengths. LuciusMalfoy made an involuntary movement; for a fraction of a second, it seemed he expectedto receive Voldemort’s wand in exchange for his own. The gesture was not missed byVoldemort, whose eyes widened maliciously.“Give you my wand, Lucius? My wand?”Some of the throng sniggered.“I have given you your liberty, Lucius, is that not enough for you? But I havenoticed that you and your family seem less than happy of late … What is it about mypresence in your home that displaces you, Lucius?”“Nothing – nothing, my Lord!”“Such lies Lucius … “The soft voice seemed to hiss on even after the cruel mouth had stopped moving.One or two of the wizards barely repressed a shudder as the hissing grew louder;something heavy could be heard sliding across the floor beneath the table.The huge snake emerged to climb slowly up Voldemort’s chair. It rose, seeminglyendlessly, and came to rest across Voldemort’s shoulders: its neck the thickness of aman’s thigh; its eyes, with their vertical slits for pupils, unblinking. Voldemort strokedthe creature absently with long thin fingers, still looking at Lucius Malfoy.“Why do the Malfoys look so unhappy with their lot? Is my return, my rise topower, not the very thing they professed to desire for so many years?”“Of course, my Lord,” said Lucius Malfoy. His hand shook as he wiped sweat

from his upper lip. “We did desire it – we do.”To Malfoy’s left, his wife made an odd, stiff nod, her eyes averted fromVoldemort and the snake. To his right, his son, Draco, who had been gazing up at theinert body overhead, glanced quickly at Voldemort and away again, terrified to make eyecontact.“My Lord,” said a dark woman halfway down the table, her voice constricted withemotion, “it is an honor to have you here, in our family’s house. There can be no higherpleasure.”She sat beside her sister, as unlike her in looks, with her dark hair and heavilylidded eyes, as she was in bearing and demeanor; where Narcissa sat rigid and impassive,Bellatrix leaned toward Voldemort, for mere words could not demonstrate her longing forcloseness.“No higher pleasure,” repeated Voldemort, his head tilted a little to one side as heconsidered Bellatrix. “That means a great deal, Bellatrix, from you.”Her face flooded with color; her eyes welled with tears of delight.“My Lord knows I speak nothing but the truth!”“No higher pleasure … even compared with the happy event that, I hear, hastaken place in your family this week?”She stared at him, her lips parted, evidently confused.“I don’t know what you mean, my Lord.”“I’m talking about your niece, Bellatrix. And yours, Lucius and Narcissa. She hasjust married the werewolf, Remus Lupin. You must be so proud.”There was an eruption of jeering laughter from around the table. Many leanedforward to exchange gleeful looks; a few thumped the table with their fists. The giantsnake, disliking the disturbance, opened its mouth wide and hissed angrily, but the DeathEaters did not hear it, so jubilant were they at Bellatrix and the Malfoys’ humiliation.Bellatrix’s face, so recently flushed wit happiness, had turned an ugly, blotchy red.“She is no niece of ours, my Lord,” she cried over the outpouring of mirth. “We –Narcissa and I – have never set eyes on our sister since she married the Mudblood. Thisbrat has nothing to do with either of us, nor any beast she marries.”“What say you, Draco?” asked Voldemort, and though his voice was quiet, itcarried clearly through the catcalls and jeers. “Will you babysit the cubs?”The hilarity mounted; Draco Malfoy looked in terror at his father, who wasstaring down into his own lap, then caught his mother’s eye. She shook her head almostimperceptibly, then resumed her own deadpan stare at the opposite wall.“Enough,” said Voldemort, stroking the angry snake. “Enough.”And the laughter died at once.“Many of our oldest family trees become a little diseased over time,” he said asBellatrix gazed at him, breathless and imploring, “You must prune yours, must you not,to keep it healthy? Cut away those parts that threaten the health of the rest.”“Yes, my Lord,” whispered Bellatrix, and her eyes swam with tears of gratitudeagain. “At the first chance!”“You shall have it,” said Voldemort. “And in your family, so in the world … weshall cut away the canker that infects us until only those of the true blood remain …”Voldemort raised Lucius Malfoy’s wand, pointed it directly at the slowlyrevolving figure suspended over the table, and gave it a tiny flick. The figure came to life

with a groan and began to struggle against invisible bonds.“Do you recognize our guest, Severus?” asked Voldemort.Snape raised his eyes to the upside down face. All of the Death Eaters werelooking up at the captive now, as though they had been given permission to showcuriosity. As she revolved to face the firelight, the woman said in a cracked and terrifiedvoice, “Severus! Help me!”“Ah, yes,” said Snape as the prisoner turned slowly away again.“And you, Draco?” asked Voldemort, stroking the snake’s snout with his wandfreehand. Draco shook his head jerkily. Now that the woman had woken, he seemedunable to look at her anymore.“But you would not have taken her classes,” said Voldemort. “For those of youwho do not know, we are joined here tonight by Charity Burbage who, until recently,taught at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”There were small noises of comprehension around the table. A broad, hunchedwoman with pointed teeth cackled.“Yes … Professor Burbage taught the children of witches and wizards all aboutMuggles … how they are not so different from us … “One of the Death Eaters spat on the floor. Charity Burbage revolved to face Snapeagain.“Severus … please … please … ““Silence,” said Voldemort, with another twitch of Malfoy’s wand, and Charity fellsilent as if gagged. “Not content with corrupting and polluting the minds of Wizardingchildren, last week Professor Burbage wrote an impassioned defense of Mudbloods in theDaily Prophet. Wizards, she says, must accept these thieves of their knowledge andmagic. The dwindling of the purebloods is, says Professor Burbage, a most desirablecircumstance … She would have us all mate with Muggles … or, no doubt, werewolves… “Nobody laughed this time. There was no mistaking the anger and contempt inVoldemort’s voice. For the third time, Charity Burbage revolved to face Snape. Tearswere pouring from her eyes into her hair. Snape looked back at her, quite impassive, asshe turned slowly away from him again.“Avada Kedavra”The flash of green light illuminated every corner of the room. Charity fell, with aresounding crash, onto the table below, which trembled and creaked. Several of the DeathEaters leapt back in their chairs. Draco fell out of his onto the floor.“Dinner, Nagini,” said Voldemort softly, and the great snake swayed and slitheredfrom his shoulders onto the polished wood.

u type dat or u just paste it from somewhere? not finished right?anyway, pls go onmany thx

i type it

movement as he began to flick through newspapers, throwing them into the rubbish pileone by one. The owl was asleep or else faking; she was angry with Harry about thelimited amount of time she was allowed out of her cage at the moment.As he neared the bottom of the pile of newspapers, Harry slowed down, searchingfor one particular issue that he knew had arrived shortly after he had returned to PrivetDrive for the summer; he remembered that there had been a small mention on the frontabout the resignation of Charity Burbage, the Muggle Studies teacher at Hogwarts. Atlast he found it. Turning to page ten, he sank into his desk chair and reread the article hehad been looking for.ALBUS DUMBLEDORE REMEMBEREDBy Elphias DogeI met Albus Dumbledore at the age of eleven, on our first day at Hogwarts. Ourmutual attraction was undoubtedly due to the fact that we both felt ourselves to beoutsiders. I had contracted dragon pox shortly before arriving at school, and whileI was no longer contagious, my pock-marked visage and greenish hue did notencourage many to approach me. For his part, Albus had arrived at Hogwartsunder the burden of unwanted notoriety. Scarcely a year previously, his father,Percival, had been convicted of a savage and well-publicized attack upon threeyoung Muggles.Albus never attempted to deny that his father (who was to die in Azkaban) hadcommitted this crime; on the contrary, when I plucked up courage to ask him, heassured me that he knew his father to be guilty. Beyond that, Dumbledore refusedto 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 wasa Muggle-hater. They could not have been more mistaken: As anybody who knewAlbus would attest, he never revealed the remotest anti-Muggle tendency. Indeed,his determined support for Muggle rights gained him many enemies in subsequentyears.In a matter of months, however, Albus's own fame had begun to eclipse thatof his father. By the end of his first year he would never again be known as theson of a Muggle-hater, but as nothing more or less than the most brilliant studentever seen at the school. Those of us who were privileged to be his friendsbenefited from his example, not to mention his help and encouragement, withwhich he was always generous. He confessed to me later in life that he knew eventhen that his greatest pleasure lay in teaching.He not only won every prize of note that the school offered, he was soon inregular correspondence with the most notable magical names of the day, includingNicolas Flamel, the celebrated alchemist; Bathilda Bagshot, the noted historian;and Adalbert Waffling, the magical theoretician. Several of his papers found theirway into learned publications such as Transfiguration Today, Challenges inCharming, and The Practical Potioneer. Dumbledore's future career seemedlikely to be meteoric, and the only question that remained was when he wouldbecome Minister of Magic. Though it was often predicted in later years that hewas 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 reasoneddiscussion. However, it is quite wrong to suggest, as some have, that the brotherswere not friends. They rubbed along as comfortably as two such different boyscould do. In fairness to Aberforth, it must be admitted that living in Albus'sshadow cannot have been an altogether comfortable experience. Being continuallyoutshone was an occupational hazard of being his friend and cannot have beenany more pleasurable as a brother. When Albus and I left Hogwarts we intendedto take the then-traditional tour of the world together, visiting and observingforeign wizards, before pursuing our separate careers. However, tragedyintervened. On the very eve of our trip, Albus's mother, Kendra, died, leavingAlbus the head, and sole breadwinner, of the family. I postponed my departurelong enough to pay my respects at Kendra's funeral, then left for what was now tobe a solitary journey. With a younger brother and sister to care for, and little goldleft 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 narrowescapes 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 frustratinglydull for such a brilliant wizard. Immersed in my own experiences, it was withhorror that I heard, toward the end of my year's travels, that another tragedy hadstruck the Dumbledores: the death of his sister, Ariana.Though Ariana had been in poor health for a long time, the blow, coming sosoon 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 – agreethat Ariana's death, and Albus's feeling of personal responsibility for it (though, ofcourse, he was guiltless), left their mark upon him forevermore.I returned home to find a young man who had experienced a much olderperson'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 renewedcloseness between Albus and Aberforth, but to an estrangement. (In time thiswould lift – in later years they reestablished, if not a close relationship, thencertainly a cordial one.) However, he rarely spoke of his parents or of Ariana fromthen on, and his friends learned not to mention them.Other quills will describe the triumphs of the following years. Dumbledore'sinnumerable contributions to the store of Wizarding knowledge, including hisdiscovery of the twelve uses of dragon's blood, will benefit generations to come,as will the wisdom he displayed in the many judgments while Chief Warlock ofthe Wizengamot. They say, still, that no Wizarding duel ever matched thatbetween Dumbledore and Grindelwald in 1945. Those who witnessed it havewritten of the terror and the awe they felt as they watched these two extraordinarywizards to battle. Dumbledore's triumph, and its consequences for the Wizardingworld, are considered a turning point in magical history to match the introductionof 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 valuein anyone, however apparently insignificant or wretched, and I believe that his

early losses endowed him with great humanity and sympathy. I shall miss hisfriendship more than I can say, but my loss is nothing compared to the Wizardingworld's. That he was the most inspiring and best loved of all Hogwartsheadmasters cannot be in question. He died as he lived: working always for thegreater good and, to his last hour, as willing to stretch out a hand to a small boywith dragon pox as he was on the day I met him.Harry finished reading, but continued to gaze at the picture accompanying theobituary. Dumbledore was wearing his familiar, kindly smile, but as he peered over thetop of his half-moon spectacles, he gave the impression, even in newsprint, of X-rayingHarry, whose sadness mingled with a sense of humiliation.He had thought he knew Dumbledore quite well, but ever since reading thisobituary he had been forced to recognize that he had barely known him at all. Never oncehad he imagined Dumbledore's childhood or youth; it was as though he had sprung intobeing as Harry had known him, venerable and silver-haired and old. The idea of ateenage Dumbledore was simply odd, like trying to imagine a stupid Hermione or afriendly Blast-Ended Skrewt.He had never thought to ask Dumbledore about his past. No doubt it would havefelt strange, impertinent even, but after all it had been common knowledge thatDumbledore had taken part in that legendary duel with Grindelwald, and Harry had notthought to ask Dumbledore what that had been like, nor about any of his other famousachievements. No, they had always discussed Harry, Harry's past, Harry's future, Harry'splans… and it seemed to Harry now, despite the fact that his future was so dangerous andso uncertain, that he had missed irreplaceable opportunities when he had failed to askDumbledore more about himself, even though the only personal question he had everasked his headmaster was also the only one he suspected that Dumbledore had notanswered honestly:"What do you see when you look in the mirror?""I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks."After several minutes' thought, Harry tore the obituary out of the Prophet, foldedit carefully, and tucked it inside the first volume of Practical Defensive Magic and itsUse against the Dark Arts. Then he threw the rest of the newspaper onto the rubbish pileand turned to face the room. It was much tidier. The only things left out of place weretoday's Daily Prophet, still lying on the bed, and on top of it, the piece of broken mirror.Harry moved across the room, slid the mirror fragment off today's Prophet, andunfolded the newspaper. He had merely glanced at the headline when he had taken therolled-up paper from the delivery owl early that morning and thrown it aside, after notingthat it said nothing about Voldemort. Harry was sure that the Ministry was leaning on theProphet to suppress news about Voldemort. It was only now, therefore, that he saw whathe had missed.Across the bottom half of the front page a smaller headline was set over a pictureof Dumbledore striding along, looking harried:DUMBLEDORE – THE TRUTH AT LAST?Coming next week, the shocking story of the flawed genius considered by manyto be the greatest wizard of his generation. Striping away the popular image ofserene, silver-bearded wisdom, Rita Skeeter reveals the disturbed childhood, thelawless youth, the life-long feuds, and the guilty secrets that Dumbledore carried

when the reply is up to thirty, I will keep going

to his grave

WHY was the man tipped to be the Minister of Magic content toremain a mere headmaster? WHAT was the real purpose of the secretorganization known as the Order of the Phoenix? HOW did Dumbledore reallymeet his end?

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"Oh, now, I'm glad you mentioned Grindelwald," says Skeeter with such atantalizing smile. "I'm afraid those who go dewy-eyed over Dumbledore'sspectacular victory must brace themselves for a bombshell – or perhaps aDungbomb. Very dirty business indeed. All I'll say is, don't be so sure that therereally was a spectacular duel of legend. After they've read my book, people maybe forced to conclude that Grindelwald simply conjured a white handkerchieffrom the end of his wand and came quietly!"Skeeter refuses to give any more away on this intriguing subject, so we turninstead to the relationship that will undoubtedly fascinate her readers more thanany other."Oh yes," says Skeeter, nodding briskly, "I devote an entire chapter to thewhole 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 noquestion 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 certainlyan open secret that Potter has had a most troubled adolescence."I ask whether Skeeter is still in touch with Harry Potter, whom she sofamously interviewed last year: a breakthrough piece in which Potter spokeexclusively of his conviction that You-Know-Who had returned.

"Oh, yes, we've developed a closer bond," says Skeeter. "Poor Potter has fewreal friends, and we met at one of the most testing moments of his life – theTriwizard Tournament. I am probably one of the only people alive who can saythat they know the real Harry Potter."Which leads us neatly to the many rumors still circulating about Dumbledore'sfinal hours. Does Skeeter believe that Potter was there when Dumbledore died?"Well, I don't want to say too much – it's all in the book – but eyewitnessesinside Hogwarts castle saw Potter running away from the scene moments afterDumbledore fell, jumped, or was pushed. Potter later gave evidence againstSeverus Snape, a man against whom he has a notorious grudge. Is everything as itseems? That is for the Wizarding community to decide – once they've read mybook."On that intriguing note, I take my leave. There can be no doubt that Skeeterhas quilled an instant bestseller. Dumbledore's legion of admirers, meanwhile,may well be trembling at what is soon to emerge about their hero.Harry reached the bottom of the article, but continued to stare blankly at the page.Revulsion and fury rose in him like vomit; he balled up the newspaper and threw it, withall his force, at the wall, where it joined the rest of the rubbish heaped around hisoverflowing bin.He began to stride blindly around the room, opening empty drawers and pickingup books only to replace them on the same piles, barely conscious of what he was doing,as random phrases from Rita's article echoed in his head: An entire chapter to the wholePotter-Dumbledore relationship ... It's been called unhealthy, even sinister ... He dabbledin the Dark Arts himself in his youth ... I've had access to a source most journalists wouldswap their wands for..."Lies!" Harry bellowed, and through the window he saw the next-door neighbor,who had paused to restart his lawn mower, look up nervously.Harry sat down hard on the bed. The broken bit of mirror danced away from him;he picked it up and turned it over in his fingers, thinking, thinking of Dumbledore and thelies with which Rita Skeeter was defaming him ...

A flash of brightest blue. Harry froze, his cut finger slipping on the jagged edge ofthe mirror again. He had imagined it, he must have done. He glanced over his shoulder,but the wall was a sickly peach color of Aunt Petunia's choosing: There was nothing bluethere for the mirror to reflect. He peered into the mirror fragment again, and saw nothingbut his own bright green eye looking back at him.He had imagined it, there was no other explanation; imagined it, because he hadbeen thinking of his dead headmaster. If anything was certain, it was that the bright blueeyes of Albus Dumbledore would never pierce him again.