Dawn Rivera

The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore

"Harry? Danny?" I say.

Hermione and I are frightened that they might curse us with Hermione's own wand. Our faces streamed with tears, we crouch beside them, four cups of tea trembling in our hands and something bulky under Hermione's arm.

"Thanks," Harry says, taking one of the cups.

"Do you mind if we talk to you?" Hermione says.

"No," Danny says, mostly, I suspect, because he doesn't want to hurt our feelings.

"Harry, Danny, you wanted to know who that man in the picture was," I say. "Well...we've got the book."

Timidly we push it onto their laps, a pristine copy of The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore.

"Where - how - ?" Harry says.

"It was in Bathilda's sitting room, just lying there...this note was sticking out if the top of it," says Hermione.

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

"'Dear Batty, 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," says Danny.

They look down upon Dumbledore's face and look angry.

"You're still really angry at us, aren't you?" says Hermione; I look up to see fresh tears leaking out of her eyes.

"No," Harry says quietly. "No, Hermione, I know it was an accident. You two were trying to get us out of there alive, and you were incredible. We'd be dead if you hadn't been there to help us."

They try to return our watery smiles, then turn their attentions to the book. It's spine is still stiff; it has clearly never been opened before. Harry and Danny riffle through the pages, looking for photographs. They come across the one they seek almost at once, the young Dumbledore and his handsome companion, roaring with laughter at some long-forgotten joke. I drop my eyes to the caption.

Albus Dumbledore, shortly after his mother's death, with his friend Gellert Grindelwald.

Harry and Danny gape at the last word for several long moments. Grindelwald. His friend, Grindelwald. They look sideways at Hermione and I; we are still contemplating the name like we cannot believe our eyes. Slowly, we look up at Harry and Danny.

"Grindelwald?" I say.

Ignoring the remainder of the photographs, Harry and Danny search the pages around them for recurrence of that fatal name. They soon discover it, and I read greedily, but become lost: it is necessary to go further back to make sense of it all, and eventually I find myself at the start of a chapter entitled "The Greater Good". Together, Harry, Danny, Hermione and I start to read:

Now approaching his eighteenth birthday, Dumbledore left Hogwarts in a blaze of glory - Head Boy, Prefect, Winner of the Barnabus Finkley Prize for Exceptional Spell-Casting, British Youth Representative to the Wizengamot, Gokd Medal-Winner for Ground-Breaking Contribution to the International Alchemical Conference in Cairo. Dumbledore intended, next, to take a grand tour with Elphias "Dogbreath" Doge, the dim-witted but devoted sidekick he had picked up at school.

The two young men were studying at the Leaky Cauldron in London, preparing to depart for Greece the following morning, when an owl arrived bearing news of Dumbledore's mother's death. "Dogbreath" Doge, who refused to be interviewed for this book, has given the public his own sentimental version of what happened next. He represents Kendra's death as a tragic blow, and Dumbledore's decision to give up his expedition as an act of noble self-sacrifice.