They looked at each other, the old man still beaming.

“Not?” repeated Harry.

“Not,” said Dumbledore.

“But . . .” Harry raised his hand instinctively toward the lightning scar. It did not

seem to be there. “But I should have died – I didn’t defend myself! I meant to let him kill

me!”

“And that,” said Dumbledore, “will, I think, have made all the difference.”

Happiness seemed to radiate from Dumbledore like light; like fire: Harry had

Never seen the man so utterly, so palpably content.

“Explain,” said Harry.

“But you already know,” said Dumbledore. He twiddled his thumbs together.

“I let him kill me,” said Harry. “Didn’t I?”

“You did,” said Dumbledore, nodding. “Go on!”

“So the part of his soul that was in me . . .”

Dumbledore nodded still more enthusiastically, urging Harry onward, a broad

Smile of encouragement on his face.

“. . . has it gone?”

“Oh yes!” said Dumbledore. “Yes, he destroyed it. Your soul is whole, and

completely your own, Harry.”

“But then . . .”

Harry trembled over his shoulder to where the small, maimed creature trembled

Under the chair.

“What is that, Professor?”

“something that is beyond either of our help,” said Dumbledore.

“But if Voldemort used the Killing Curse,” Harry started again, “and nobody died

for me this time – how can I be alive?”

“I think you know,” said Dumbledore. “Think back. Remember what he did, in

his ignorance, in his greed and his cruelty.”

Harry thought. He let his gaze drift over his surroundings. If it was indeed a

Palace in which they sat, it was an odd one, with chairs set in little rows and bits of

Railing here and there, and still, he and Dumbledore and the stunted creatures under the

Chair were the only beings there. Then the answer rose to his lips easily, without effort.

“He took my blood,” said Harry.

“Precisely!” said Dumbledore. “He took your blood and rebuilt his living body

with it! Your blood in his veins, Harry, Lily’s protection inside both of you! He thethered

you to life while he lives!”

“I live . . . while he lives? But I thought . . . I thought it was the other way around!

I thought we both had to die? Or is it the same thing?”

He was distracted by the whimpering and thumping of the agonized creature

Behind them and glanced back at it yet again.

“Are you sure we can’t do anything?”

“There is no help possible.”

“Then explain . . . more,” said Harry, and Dumbledore smiled.

“You were the seventh Horcrux, Harry, the Horcrux he never meant to make. He

Had rendered his soul so unstable that it broke apart when he committed those acts of

Unspeakable evil, the murder of your parents, the attempted killing of a child. But what

Escaped from that room was even less than he knew. He left more than his body behind.

He left part of himself latched to you, the would-be victim who had survived.

“And his knowledge remained woefully incomplete, Harry! That which

Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and

children’s tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands

Nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach

Of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped.

“He took your blood believing it would strengthen him. He took into his body a

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 601