“ Avada Kedavra”
The flash of green light illuminated every co r
ner of the room. Charity fell, with a resounding crash, onto the table below, which trembled and creaked. Several of the Death Ea t
ers leapt back in their chairs. Draco fell out of his onto the floor.
“Dinner, Nagini,”
said Voldemort softly, and the great snake swayed and slithered from his shou l ders onto the polished wood.

Chapter Two In Memora
n dum

Harry was bleeding. Clutching his right hand in his left and swearing under his breath, he shou l
dered open his bedroom door. There was a crunch of brea k
ing china. He had trodden on a cup of cold tea that had been si t ting on the floor outside his bedroom door.
"What the --?"
He looked around, the landing of number four, Privet Drive, was deserted. Possibly the cup of tea was Dudley's idea of a clever booby trap. Keeping his bleeding hand elevated, Harry scraped the fragments of cup together
with the other hand and threw them into the already crammed bin just visible inside his bedroom door. Then he tramped across to the bat h
room to run his finger under the tap.
It was stupid, pointless, irritating beyond belief that he still had four days left of being unable to pe r
form magic…but he had to admit to himself that this jagged cut in his finger would have defeated him. He had never learned how to repair wounds, and now he came to think of it Ц particularly in light of his imm
e diate plans Ц this s
eemed a serious flaw in his magical education. Making a mental note to ask Hermione how it was done, he used a large wad of toilet paper to mop up as much of the tea as he could before retur
n ing to his bedroom and slamming the door behind him.
Harry had spent the morning completely empt y
ing his school trunk for the first time since he had packed it six years ago. At the start of the intervening school years, he had merely skimmed off the topmost three quarters of the contents and replaced or u
p dated them, leaving a layer of general debris at the bottom Ц
old quills, desiccated beetle eyes, single socks that no longer fit. Minutes pr e
viously, Harry had plunged his hand into this mulch, experienced a stabbing pain in the fourth fi n
ger of his right hand, and withdrawn it to see a lot of blood.
He now proceeded a little more cautiously. Kneeling down beside the trunk again, he groped around in the bottom and, after r e
trieving an old badge that flickered feebly b e
tween SUPPORT CEDRIC DIGGORY and
POTTER STINKS , a cracked and worn-out Sneakoscope, and a gold locket inside which a note signed R.A.B. had been hidden, he f
i
nally discovered the sharp edge that had done the damage. He recognized it at once. It was a two-inch-long fragment of the enchanted mirror that his dead godfather, Si r
ius, had given him. Harry laid it aside and felt cautiously around the trunk for the rest, but nothing
more remained of his godfather's last gift e x
cept powdered glass, which clung to the dee p est layer of debris like glittering grit.
Harry sat up and examined the jagged piece on which he had cut himself, seeing not h
ing but his own bright green eye reflected back at him. Then he placed the fragment on top of that mor n
ing's Daily prophet, which lay unread on the bed, and attempted to stem the sudden upsurge of bitter memories, the stabs of regret and of longing the discovery of the broken mi r
ror had occasioned, by attacking the rest of the ru b
bish in the trunk.
It took another hour to empty it completely, throw away the useless items, and sort the r e
mainder in piles according to whether or not he would need them from now on. His school and Quidditch robes, cauldron, parc h
ment, quills, and most of his textbooks were piled in a corner, to be left behind. He wo n
dered what his aunt and uncle would do with them; burn them in the dead of night, prob a
bly, as if they were evidence of some dreadful crime. His Muggle clothing, Invis i
bility Cloak, potion-making kit, certain books, the photograph album Hagrid had once given him, a stack of letters, and his wand had been r
e packed into an old rucksack. In a front pocket were the M
a rauder's Map and the locket with the note signed R.A.B. inside it. The locket was accorded this place of honor not b
e cause it was valuable Ц in all usual senses it was worthless Ц
but because of what it had cost to attain it.
This left a sizable stack of newspapers sitting on his desk beside his snowy owl, He d
wig: one for each of the days Harry had spent at Privet Drive this su m mer.
He got up off the floor, stretched, and moved across to his desk. Hedwig made no movement as he began to flick through newsp a
pers, throwing them into the rubbish pile one by one. The owl was asleep or else faking; she was angry with Harry about the li
m ited amount of time she was allowed out of her cage at the moment.
As he neared the bottom of the pile of newsp a pers, Harry slowed down, searching for one partic
u lar issue that he knew had a r
rived shortly after he had returned to Privet Drive for the summer; he reme m
bered that there had been a small mention on the front about the resignation of Cha r
ity Burbage, the Muggle Studies teacher at Hogwarts. At last he found it. Tur n
ing to page ten, he sank into his desk chair and r e
read the article he had been looking for.
ALBUS DUMBLEDORE REMEMBERED
By Elphias Doge
I met Albus Dumbledore at the age of eleven, on our first day at Hogwarts. Our mutual a t
traction was undoubtedly due to the fact that we both felt ou r selves to be outsiders. I had co
n tracted dragon pox shortly before a r
riving at school, and while I was no
longer contagious, my pock-marked visage and gree n ish hue did not encourage many to a
p proach me. For his part, Albus had arrived at Hogwarts under the bu
r den of unwanted not o
riety. Scarcely a year previously, his father, Percival, had been co n
victed of a savage and well-publicized attack upon three young Muggles.
Albus never attempted to deny that his father (who was to die in Azkaban) had commi t
ted this crime; on the contrary, when I plucked up courage to ask him, he assured me that he knew his father to be guilty. Beyond that, Du m
bledore refused to speak of the sad business, though many a t
tempted to make him do so. Some, indeed, were disposed to praise his f a
ther's action and assumed that Albus too was a Mu g
gle-hater. They could not have been more mistaken: As anybody who knew Albus would attest, he never revealed the r e
motest anti-Muggle tendency. Indeed, his determined su p
port for Muggle rights gained him many en e
mies in subsequent years.
In a matter of months, however, Albus's own fame had begun to eclipse that of his f a
ther. By the end of his first year he would never again be known as the son of a Muggle-hater, but as nothing more or less than the most bri l
liant student ever seen at the school. Those of us who were privileged to be his friends benefited from his example, not to mention his help and encouragement, with which he was always ge
n erous. He confessed to me later in life that he knew even then that his greatest pleasure lay in teac
h ing.
He not only won every prize of note that the school offered, he was soon in regular corr e
spondence with the most notable magical names of the day, i n cluding Nicolas Flamel, the cel
e
brated alchemist; Bathilda Bagshot, the noted historian; and Adalbert Waffling, the magical theoretician. Several of his p a
pers found their way into learned publications such as Transfiguration T
o day, Challenges in Charming, and
The Practical Potioneer . Dumbledore's future career seemed likely to be meteoric, and the only question that r
e mained was when he would become Minister of Magic.
Though it was often predicted in later years that he was on the point of taking the job, however, he never had Mini s
terial ambitions.
Three years after we had started at Hogwarts, A l
bus's brother, Aberforth, arrived at school. They were not alike: Aberfor
th was never bookish and, unlike Albus, preferred to settle arguments by dueling rather than through reasoned discussion. However, it is quite wrong to suggest, as some have, that the brothers were not friends. They rubbed along as co
m fortably as two such different boys could do. In fairness to Abe
r forth, it must be admitted that living in Albus's shadow cannot have been an altogether co
m fortable experience. Being continually outshone was an occ
u pational hazard of being his friend and cannot have been any more pleasu
r able as a brother. When Albus and I left Ho g
warts we intended to take the then-traditional tour of the world together, visiting and o b
serving foreign wizards, before pursuing our sep a
rate careers. However, tragedy intervened. On the very eve of our trip, Albus's mother, Kendra, died, leaving
A l bus the head, and sole brea
d winner, of the family. I postponed my departure long enough to pay my r
e spects at Kendra's f u
neral, then left for what was now to be a solitary journey. With a younger brother and si s
ter to care for, and little gold left to them, there could no longer be any question of Albus accompan y
ing me.
That was the period of our lives when we had least contact. I wrote to Albus, descri b
ing, perhaps insensitively, the wonders of my journey, from na r row escapes from chimaeras in Greece to the exper
i ments of the Egyptian a l
chemists. His letters told me little of his day-to-day life, which I guessed to be fru s
tratingly dull for such a brilliant wizard.
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