of his sister, Ariana.
Though Ariana had been in poor health for a long time, the blow, coming so soon 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 – agree that Ariana’s death and Albus’s feeling of personal responsibility for it (though, of course, he was guiltless) left their mark upon him forever more.
I returned home to find a young man who had experienced a much older person’s suffering. Albus was more reserved than before, and much less light-hearted. To add to his misery, the loss of Ariana had led, not to a renewed closeness between Albus and Aberforth, but to an estrangement. (In time this would lift – in later years they re-established, if not a close relationship, then certainly a cordial one.) However, he rarely spoke of his parents or of Ariana from then on, and his friends learned not to mention them.
Other quills will describe the triumphs of the following years. Dumbledore’s innumerable contributions to the store of wizarding knowledge, including his discovery of the twelve uses of dragon’s blood, will benefit generations to come, as will the wisdom he displayed in the many judgements he made while Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot. They say, still, that no wizarding duel ever matched that between Dumbledore and Grindelwald in 1945. Those who witnessed it have written of the terror and the awe they felt as they watched these two extraordinary wizards do battle. Dumbledore’s triumph, and its consequences for the wizarding world, are considered a turning point in magical history to match the introduction of 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 value in anyone, however apparently insignificant or wretched, and I believe that his early losses endowed him with great humanity and sympathy. I shall miss his friendship more than I can say, but my loss is as nothing compared to the wizarding world’s. That he was the most inspiring and the best loved of all Hogwarts headmasters cannot be in question. He died as he lived: working always for the greater good and, to his last hour, as willing to stretch out a hand to a small boy with dragon pox as he was on the day that I met him.
Harry finished reading but continued to gaze at the picture accompanying the obituary. Dumbledore was wearing his familiar, kindly smile, but as he peered over the top of his half-moon spectacles he gave the impression, even in newsprint, of X-raying Harry, whose sadness mingled with a sense of humiliation.
He had thought he knew Dumbledore quite well, but ever since reading this obituary he had been forced to recognise that he had barely known him at all. Never once had he imagined Dumbledore’s childhood or youth; it was as though he had sprung into being as Harry had known him, venerable and silver-haired and old. The idea of a teenage Dumbledore was simply odd, like trying to imagine a stupid Hermione or a friendly Blast-Ended Skrewt.
He had never thought to ask Dumbledore about his past. No doubt it would have felt strange, impertinent even, but after all, it had been common knowledge that Dumbledore had taken part in that legendary duel with Grindelwald, and Harry had not thought to ask Dumbledore what that had been like, nor about any of his other famous achievements. No, they had always discussed Harry, Harry’s past, Harry’s future, Harry’s plans … and it seemed to Harry now, despite the fact that his future was so dangerous and so uncertain, that he had missed irreplaceable opportunities when he had failed to ask Dumbledore more about himself, even though the only personal question he had ever asked his Headmaster was also the only one he suspected that Dumbledore had not answered honestly:
‘What do you see when you look in the Mirror?’
‘I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woollen socks.’
After several minutes’ thought, Harry tore the obituary out of the Prophet, folded it carefully and tucked it inside the first volume of Practical Defensive Magic and its Use Against the Dark Arts. Then he threw the rest of the newspaper on to the rubbish pile and turned to face the room. It was much tidier. The only things left out of place were today’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 and unfolded the newspaper. He had merely glanced at the headline when he had taken the rolled-up paper from the delivery owl early that morning and thrown it aside, after noting that it said nothing about Voldemort. Harry was sure that the Ministry was leaning on the Prophet to suppress news about Voldemort. It was only now, therefore, that he saw what he had missed.
Across the bottom half of the front page, a smaller headline was set over a picture of Dumbledore striding along looking harried: DUMBLEDORE – THE TRUTH AT LAST?
Coming next week, the shocking story of the flawed genius considered by many to be the greatest wizard of his generation. Stripping away the popular image of serene, silver-bearded wisdom, Rita Skeeter reveals the disturbed childhood, the lawless youth, the lifelong feuds and the guilty secrets that Dumbledore carried to his grave. WHY was the man tipped to be Minister for Magic content to remain a mere headmaster? WHAT was the real purpose of the secret organisation known as the Order of the Phoenix? HOW did Dumbledore really meet his end?
The answers to these, and many more questions are explored in the explosive new biography The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, by Rita Skeeter, exclusively interviewed by Betty Braithwaite, page 13, inside.
Harry ripped open the paper and found page thirteen. The article was topped with a picture showing another familiar face: a woman wearing jewelled glasses with elaborately curled, blonde hair, her teeth bared in what was clearly supposed to be a winning smile, wiggling her fingers up at him. Doing his best to ignore this nauseating image, Harry read on.
In person, Rita Skeeter is much warmer and softer than her famously ferocious quill-portraits might suggest. Greeting me in the hallway of her cosy home, she leads me straight into the kitchen for a cup of tea, a slice of pound cake and, it goes without saying, a steaming vat of freshest gossip.
Well, of course, Dumbledore is a biographer’s dream,’ says Skeeter. ‘Such a long, full life. I’m sure my book will be the first of very, very many.’
Skeeter was certainly quick off the mark. Her nine-hundred page book was completed a mere four weeks after Dumbledore’s mysterious death in June. I ask her how she managed this super-fast feat.
‘Oh, when you’ve been a journalist as long as I have, working to a deadline is second nature. I knew that the wizarding world was clamouring for the full story and I wanted to be the first to meet that need.’
I mention the recent, widely publicised remarks of Elphias Doge, Special Advisor to the Wizengamot and long-standing friend of Albus Dumbledore’s, that ‘Skeeter’s book contains less fact than a Chocolate Frog Card.’
Skeeter throws back her head and laughs.
‘Darling Dodgy! I remember interviewing him a few years back about merpeople rights, bless him. Completely gaga, seemed to think we were sitting at the bottom of Lake Windermere, kept telling me to watch out for trout.’
And yet Elphias Doge’s accusations of inaccuracy have been echoed in many places. Does Skeeter really feel that four short weeks have been enough to gain a full picture of Dumbledore’s long and extraordinary life?
‘Oh, my dear,’ beams Skeeter, rapping me affectionately across the knuckles, ‘you know as well as I do how much information can be generated by a fat bag of Galleons, a refusal to hear the word “no” and a nice sharp Quick-Quotes Quill! People were queuing to dish the dirt on Dumbledore, anyway. Not everyone thought he was so wonderful, you
