Supposed to go back, that it was all part of some secret path laid out for them by

Dumbledore: but there was no map, no plan. Dumbledore had left them to grope in the

darkness, to wrestle with unknown and undreamed-of terrors, alone and unaided: Nothing

Was explained, nothing was given freely, they had no sword, and now, Harry had no

Wand. And he had dropped the photograph of the thief, and it would surely be easy now

For Voldemort to find out who he was . . .

Voldemort had all the information now . . .

“Harry?”

Hermione looked frightened that he might curse her with her own wand. Her face

Streaked with tears, she crouched down beside him, two cups of tea trembling in her

Hands and something bulky under her arm.

“Thanks,” he said, taking one of the cups.

“Do you mind if I talk to you?”

“No,” he said because he did not want to hurt her feelings.

“Harry, you wanted to know who that man in the picture was. Well . . . I’ve got

the book.”

Timidly she pushed it onto his lap, a pristine copy of The Life and Lies of Albus

Dumbledore.

“Where --- how --- ?”

“It was in Bathilda’s sitting room, just lying there. . . . This note was sticking out

of the top of it.”

Hermione read the few lines of spiky, acid-green writing aloud.

“ ‘Dear Bally, Thanks for your help. Here’s a copy of the book, hope you like it.

You said everything, even if you don’t remember it. Rita.’ I think it must have arrived

while the real Bathilda was alive, but perhaps she wasn’t in any fit state to read it?”

“No, she probably wasn’t.”

Harry looked down upon Dumbledore’s face and experienced a surge of savage

pleasure: Now he would know if all the things that Dumbledore had never thought it

Worth telling him, whether Dumbledore wanted him to or not.

“You’re still really angry at me, aren’t you?” said Hermione; he looked up to see

Fresh tears leaking out of her eyes, and knew that his anger must have shown in his face.

“No,” he said quietly. “No, Hermione, I know it was an accident. You were trying

to get us out of there alive, and you were incredible. I’d be dead if you hadn’t been there

to help me.”

He tried to return her watery smile, then turned his attention to the book. Its spine

Was stiff; it had clearly never been opened before. He riffled through the pages, looking

For photographs. He came across the one he sought almost at once, the young

Dumbledore and his handsome companion, roaring with laughter at some long-forgotten

Joke. Harry dropped his eyes to the caption.

Albus Dumbledore, shortly after his mother’s death,

With his friend Gellert Grindelwald.

Harry gaped at the last word for several long moments. Grindelwald. His friend

Grindelwald. He looked sideways at Hermione, who was still contemplating the name as

Though she could not believe her eyes. Slowly she looked up at Harry.

“Grindelwald!”

Ignoring the remainder of the photographs, Harry searched the pages around them

For a recurrence of that fatal name. He soon discovered it and read greedily, but became

lost: It was necessary to go farther back to make sense of it all, and eventually he found

himself at the start of a chapter entitled “The Greater Good.” Together, he and Hermione

started to read:

Now approaching his eighteenth birthday, Dumbledore left Hogwarts in a blaze

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 811