Sure of things like time, here.

“He killed me with your wand.”

“He failed to kill you with my wand,” Dumbledore corrected Harry. “I think we

can agree that you are not dead – though, of course,” he added, as if fearing he had been

discourteous, “I do not minimize your sufferings, which I am sure were severe.”

“I feel great at the moment, though,” said Harry, looking down at his clean,

unblemished hands. “Where are we, exactly?”

“Well, I was going to ask you that,” said Dumbledore, looking around. “Where

would you say that we are?”

Until Dumbledore had asked, Harry had not known. Now, however, he found that

He had an answer ready to give.

“It looks,” he said slowly, “like King’s Cross station. Except a lo cleaner and

empty, and there are no trains as far as I can see.”

“King’s Cross station!” Dumbledore was chuckling immoderately. “Good

gracious, really?”

“Well, where do you think we are?” asked Harry, a little defensively.

“My dear boy, I have no idea. This is, as they say, your party.”

Harry had no idea what this meant; Dumbledore was being infuriating. He glared

At him, then remembered a much more pressing question than that of their current

Location.

“The Deathly Hallows,” he said, and he was glad to see that the words wiped the

smile from Dumbledore’s face.

“Ah, yes,” he said. He even looked a little worried.

“Well?”

For the first time since Harry had met Dumbledore, he looked less than an old

Man, much less. He looked fleetingly like a small boy caught in wrongdoing.

“Can you forgive me?” he said. “Can you forgive me for not trusting you? For not

telling you? Harry, I only feared that you would fail as I had failed. I only dreaded that

You would make my mistakes. I crave your pardon, Harry. I have known, for some time

now, that you are the better man.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Harry, startled by Dumbledore’s tone, by the

Sudden tears in his eyes.

“The Hallows, the Hallows,” murmured Dumbledore. “A desperate man’s

dream!”

“But they’re real!”

“Real, and dangerous, and a lure for fools,” said Dumbledore. “And I was such a

fool. But you know, don’t you? I have no secrets from you anymore. You know.”

“What do I know?”

Dumbledore turned his whole body to face Harry, and tears still sparkled in the

Brilliantly blue eyes.

“Master of death, Harry, master of Death! Was I better, ultimately, than

Voldemort?”

“Of course you were,” said Harry. “Of course – how can you ask that? You never

killed if you could avoid it!”

“True, true,” said Dumbledore, and he was like a child seeking reassurance. “Yet

I too sought a way to conquer death, Harry.”

“Not the way he did,” said Harry. After all his anger at Dumbledore, how odd it

Was to sit here, beneath the high, vaulted ceiling, and defend Dumbledore from himself.

“Hallows, not Horcruxes.”

“Hallows,” murmured Dumbledore, “not Horcruxes. Precisely.”

There was a pause. The creature behind them whimpered, but Harry no longer

Looked around.

“Grindelwald was looking for them too?” he asked.

Dumbledore closed his eyes for a moment and nodded.

“It was the thing, above all, that drew us together,” he said quietly. “Two clever,

arrogant boys with a shared obsession. He wanted to come to Godric’s Hollow, as I am

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 527