The illusion was gone as soon as it had come. The giants roared as the Death Eaters rose together, and there were many cries, gasps, even laughter. Voldemort had frozen where he stood, but his red eyes had found Harry, and he stared as Harry moved towards him, with nothing but the fire between them.

  Then a voice yelled –

  ‘HARRY! NO!’

  He turned: Hagrid was bound and trussed, tied to a tree nearby. His massive body shook the branches overhead as he struggled, desperate.

  ‘NO! NO! HARRY, WHAT’RE YEH –?’

  ‘QUIET!’ shouted Rowle, and with a flick of his wand Hagrid was silenced.

  Bellatrix, who had leapt to her feet, was looking eagerly from Voldemort to Harry, her breast heaving. The only things that moved were the flames and the snake, coiling and uncoiling in the glittering cage behind Voldemort’s head.

  Harry could feel his wand against his chest, but he made no attempt to draw it. He knew that the snake was too well protected, knew that if he managed to point the wand at Nagini, fifty curses would hit him first. And still, Voldemort and Harry looked at each other, and now Voldemort tilted his head a little to the side, considering the boy standing before him, and a singularly mirthless smile curled the lipless mouth.

  ‘Harry Potter,’ he said, very softly. His voice might have been part of the spitting fire. ‘The boy who lived.’

  None of the Death Eaters moved. They were waiting: everything was waiting. Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny, and her blazing look, and the feel of her lips on his –

  Voldemort had raised his wand. His head was still tilted to one side, like a curious child, wondering what would happen if he proceeded. Harry looked back into the red eyes, and wanted it to happen now, quickly, while he could still stand, before he lost control, before he betrayed fear –

  He saw the mouth move and a flash of green light, and everything was gone.

  — CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE —

  King’s Cross

  He lay face down, listening to the silence. He was perfectly alone. Nobody was watching. Nobody else was there. He was not perfectly sure that he was there himself.

  A long time later, or maybe no time at all, it came to him that he must exist, must be more than disembodied thought, because he was lying, definitely lying, on some surface. Therefore, he had a sense of a touch, and the thing against which he lay existed too.

  Almost as soon as he had reached this conclusion, Harry became conscious that he was naked. Convinced as he was of his total solitude, this did not concern him, but it did intrigue him slightly. He wondered whether, as he could feel, he would be able to see. In opening them, he discovered that he had eyes.

  He lay in a bright mist, though it was not like mist he had ever experienced before. His surroundings were not hidden by cloudy vapour; rather the cloudy vapour had not yet formed into surroundings. The floor on which he lay seemed to be white, neither warm nor cold, but simply there, a flat, blank something on which to be.

  He sat up. His body appeared unscathed. He touched his face. He was not wearing glasses any more.

  Then a noise reached him through the unformed nothingness that surrounded him: the small, soft thumpings of something that flapped, flailed and struggled. It was a pitiful noise, yet also slightly indecent. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was eavesdropping on something furtive, shameful.

  For the first time, he wished he were clothed.

  Barely had the wish formed in his head, than robes appeared a short distance away. He took them and pulled them on: they were soft, clean and warm. It was extraordinary how they had appeared, just like that, the moment he had wanted them …

  He stood up, looking around. Was he in some great Room of Requirement? The longer he looked, the more there was to see. A great, domed glass roof glittered high above him in sunlight. Perhaps it was a palace. All was hushed and still, except for those odd thumping and whimpering noises coming from somewhere close by in the mist …

  Harry turned slowly on the spot, and his surroundings seemed to invent themselves before his eyes. A wide open space, bright and clean, a hall larger by far than the Great Hall, with that clear, domed glass ceiling. It was quite empty. He was the only person there, except for –

  He recoiled. He had spotted the thing that was making the noises. It had the form of a small, naked child, curled on the ground, its skin raw and rough, flayed-looking, and it lay shuddering under a seat where it had been left, unwanted, stuffed out of sight, struggling for breath.

  He was afraid of it. Small and fragile and wounded though it was, he did not want to approach it. Nevertheless, he drew slowly nearer, ready to jump back at any moment. Soon he stood near enough to touch it, yet he could not bring himself to do it. He felt like a coward. He ought to comfort it, but it repulsed him.

  ‘You cannot help.’

  He spun round. Albus Dumbledore was walking towards him, sprightly and upright, wearing sweeping robes of midnight blue.

  ‘Harry.’ He spread his arms wide, and his hands were both whole and white and undamaged. ‘You wonderful boy. You brave, brave man. Let us walk.’

  Stunned, Harry followed as Dumbledore strode away from where the flayed child lay whimpering, leading him to two seats that Harry had not previously noticed, set some distance away under that high, sparkling ceiling. Dumbledore sat down in one of them, and Harry fell into the other, staring at his old Headmaster’s face. Dumbledore’s long, silver hair and beard, the piercingly blue eyes behind half-moon spectacles, the crooked nose: everything was as he had remembered it. And yet …

  ‘But you’re dead,’ said Harry.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Dumbledore matter-of-factly.

  ‘Then … I’m dead too?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Dumbledore, smiling still more broadly. ‘That is the question, isn’t it? On the whole, dear boy, I think not.’

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

  ‘Not?’ repeated Harry.

  ‘Not,’ said Dumbledore.

  ‘But …’ Harry raised his hand instinctively towards 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 onwards, 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 glanced 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 creature 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 tethered you to life while he lives!’

  ‘I live … while he lives? But I thought … I thought it was the other way round! I thought we both had to die? Or is it the same thing?’

  He was distracted by the whimpering and thumping of the agonised 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 tiny part of the enchantment your mother laid upon you when she died for you. His body keeps her sacrifice alive, and while that enchantment survives, so do you and so does Voldemort’s one last hope for himself.’

  Dumbledore smiled at Harry, and Harry stared at him.

  ‘And you knew this? You knew – all along?’

  ‘I guessed. But my guesses have, usually, been good,’ said Dumbledore happily, and they sat in silence for what seemed like a long time, while the creature behind them continued to whimper and tremble.

  ‘There’s more,’ said Harry. ‘There’s more to it. Why did my wand break the wand he borrowed?’

  ‘As to that, I cannot be sure.’

  ‘Have a guess, then,’ said Harry, and Dumbledore laughed.

  ‘What you must understand, Harry, is that you and Lord Voldemort have journeyed together into realms of magic hitherto unknown and untested. But here is what I think happened, and it is unprecedented, and no wandmaker could, I think, ever have predicted it or explained it to Voldemort.

  ‘Without meaning to, as you now know, Lord Voldemort doubled the bond between you when he returned to a human form. A part of his soul was still attached to yours, and, thinking to strengthen himself, he took a part of your mother’s sacrifice into himself. If he could only have understood the precise and terrible power of that sacrifice, he would not, perhaps, have dared to touch your blood … but then, if he had been able to understand, he could not be Lord Voldemort, and might never have murdered at all.

  ‘Having ensured this two-fold connection, having wrapped your destinies together more securely than ever two wizards were joined in history, Voldemort proceeded to attack you with a wand that shared a core with yours. And now something very strange happened, as we know. The cores reacted in a way that Lord Voldemort, who never knew that your wand was twin of his, had never expected.

  ‘He was more afraid than you were that night, Harry. You had accepted, even embraced, the possibility of death, something Lord Voldemort has never been able to do. Your courage won, your wand overpowered his. And in doing so, something happened between those wands, something that echoed the relationship between their masters.

  ‘I believe that your wand imbibed some of the power and qualities of Voldemort’s wand that night, which is to say that it contained a little of Voldemort himself. So your wand recognised him when he pursued you, recognised a man who was both kin and mortal enemy, and it regurgitated some of his own magic against him, magic much more powerful than anything Lucius’s wand had ever performed. Your wand now contained the power of your enormous courage and of Voldemort’s own deadly skill: what chance did that poor stick of Lucius Malfoy’s stand?’

  ‘But if my wand was so powerful, how come Hermione was able to break it?’ asked Harry.

  ‘My dear boy, its remarkable effects were directed only at Voldemort, who had tampered so ill-advisedly with the deepest laws of magic. Only towards him was that wand abnormally powerful. Otherwise it was a wand like any other … though a good one, I am sure,’ Dumbledore finished kindly.

  Harry sat in thought for a long time, or perhaps seconds. It was very hard to be 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 minimise 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 lot 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 any more. 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 round.

  ‘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 sure you have guessed, because of the grave of Ignotus Peverell. He wanted to explore the place the third brother had died.’

  ‘So it’s true?’ asked Harry. ‘All of it? The Peverell brothers –’

  ‘– were the three brothers of the tale,’ said Dumbledore, nodding. ‘Oh yes, I think so. Whether they met Death on a lonely road … I think it more likely that the Peverell brothers were simply gifted, dangerous wizards who succeeded in creating those powerful objects. The story of them being Death’s own Hallows seems to me the sort of legend that might have sprung up around such creations.

  ‘The Cloak, as you know now, travelled down through the ages, father to son, mother to daughter, right down to Ignotus’s last living descendant, who was born, as Ignotus was, in the village of Godric’s Hollow.’

  Dumbledore smiled at Harry.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You. You have guessed, I know, why the Cloak was in my possession on the night your parents died. James had showed it to me just a few days previously. It explained much of his undetected wrongdoing at school! I could hardly believe what I was seeing. I asked to borrow it, to examine it. I had long since given up my dream of uniting the Hallows, but I could not resist, could not help taking a closer look … It was a Cloak the likes of which I had never seen, immensely old, perfect in every respect … and then your father died, and I had two Hallows at last, all to myself!’

  His tone was unbearably bitter.

  ‘The Cloak wouldn’t have helped them survive, though,’ Harry said quickly. ‘Voldemort knew where my mum and dad were. The Cloak couldn’t have made them curse-proof.’

  ‘True,’ sighed Dumbledore. ‘True.’

  Harry waited, but Dumbledore did not speak, so he prompted him.

  ‘So you’d given up looking for the Hallows when you saw the Cloak?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Dumbledore faintly. It seemed that he forced himself to meet Harry’s eyes. ‘You know what happened. You know. You cannot despise me more than I despise myself.’