"Fletcher's dead."
"Who?"
"Mundungus—Fletcher. He was covering the others so they could get out during the operation, and the Ministry Aurors cornered him, and then…"
After a brief silence, a voice said dully,
"I never liked him. He was always up to some petty theft or other…"
"That's true, Harry, I won't deny it. But he was still fighting, right up to the moment he died."
Another silence fell.
"What I mean is—under Voldemort's rule, there was never any chance of him turning to Voldemort's side. But he could still choose whether or not to fight."
"I understand, sir."
"He once told me that if he ever died, he'd like to be buried beside Sherlock Holmes's grave."
Harry looked up in surprise, staring at Dumbledore as though he could hardly believe it.
He would never have imagined that Mundungus could make such a request.
"Remus tells me you went to see him again."
Something tightened in Harry's chest. He looked up at Dumbledore.
"Sorry, sir, I—"
"There's no need to apologize, Harry. I'm not blaming you."
Dumbledore's deep blue eyes met Harry's green ones over the half-moon spectacles.
"Remus says you're very careful about your safety—wore the invisibility cloak the whole time. That's good."
"Sorry, sir. I know he's already dead, but I just… I couldn't help it."
Harry's fists clenched tight, his eyes carrying a look of pain mixed with something like hope. "I wish so badly that none of it were true."
"Of course, Harry. I understand."
Dumbledore said quietly.
"Sherlock's passing is an enormous loss for all of us. But it's a stage that life requires everyone to go through."
Harry said nothing. He knew what Dumbledore meant—birth, age, sickness, death; these truly were stages every person had to pass through.
But watching your own friend die a violent death with your own eyes—that was an experience he'd rather have done without.
"I came today really just to talk with you."
Dumbledore went on.
"I know you've been under a great deal of pressure lately, and you've been doing very well—better than I ever expected."
His tone was warm with something like relief.
"A week ago, the people you met have made up their minds to join us. That's certainly good news. Ever since I lost to Voldemort in that battle, your standing in the wizarding world has begun to outweigh mine."
"Being received by you, and hearing your assurance in person—that matters a great deal to them."
"Sir!"
Hearing Dumbledore bring the matter up himself, Harry—who had been holding back a question this whole time—couldn't stop himself from asking:
"Why did you lose to Voldemort in that battle?"
"Why—did you think I wouldn't?"
Dumbledore raised an eyebrow. "Harry, if you truly believed that, then you underestimate him rather badly."
"No, that's not what I meant—"
Harry said quickly. "But sir, everyone says you're the greatest wizard of this age, the only one Voldemort has ever feared—"
"After I lost to Voldemort, 'everyone' stopped saying that."
Dumbledore said, just like that.
Harry was struck speechless. Because it really was true.
"First—'greatest' does not mean 'most powerful.'
"Second, I don't believe it myself, either way.
"And third—"
Dumbledore said, his voice distant: "I've told you all more than once that Voldemort possesses a kind of powerful magic I will never possess.
"But you never wanted to believe it. Minerva didn't. You didn't. Mundungus didn't…"
Harry: "…"
"Don't be surprised that I would lose to him, Harry.
"As I've always said—love is the greatest power in this world.
"So even though we're at a disadvantage now, I have never once lost faith.
"Neither should you, Harry—"
Dumbledore said, smiling. "You might not believe it, but as things stand now, the situation is already much better than I expected."
"Better? Much better?"
Harry stared at Dumbledore in astonishment.
Do you hear yourself?
Harry was no longer the naive boy he had once been.
Since becoming the Order of the Phoenix's nominal second-in-command, he had come to know a great deal about Voldemort's rise and about the events of the First Wizarding War.
It was no exaggeration to say that even at the height of the First War, during Voldemort's darkest reign, things had never been as bad as they were now.
Back then the Death Eaters had been far more reckless than they were today—people heard almost daily of the Dark Mark appearing, and it seemed like someone they knew was being killed all the time.
But at least the Ministry, back then, still stood for the side of good—not the way it had now swung wholesale over to the enemy.
Not to mention that Hogwarts had never once fallen, from beginning to end.
That was why people had believed, back then, that this ancient school was the one truly safe place left in the entire wizarding world.
Compare that to now: the Ministry's Aurors had started walking arm in arm with the Death Eaters—Mundungus had died at their hands, too.
And Hogwarts itself had become enemy territory.
The Death Eaters had, it was true, stopped killing indiscriminately—but only because Voldemort no longer needed that method to demonstrate his strength.
"No, Harry. What I mean is—since Sherlock's passing, since Moriarty's full involvement began, things haven't collapsed to the point where we've lost all ability to hold the line."
Dumbledore said, something knowing in his tone.
"The Order of the Phoenix is still running as it should. People haven't stopped resisting. We've shown a resilience Voldemort never expected.
"On the Muggle side, Moriarty's criminal network hasn't managed to seize total control of London either.
"That, of course, owes a great deal to Sherlock's remarkable brother."
Harry nodded. If you had to put it that way—fair enough.
Speaking of Mycroft, Harry couldn't help feeling a little helpless.
Over his own younger brother's death, Mycroft hadn't seemed particularly sorrowful.
Harry knew perfectly well, though—much as the two brothers argued every time they met, Mycroft cared deeply for him.
The fact that Mycroft had arranged to have Harry keep watch over Sherlock even before they'd ever met said enough about that on its own.
Still, Harry understood Mycroft's temperament well enough. He guessed that this particular older brother had simply buried his grief somewhere deep and out of sight.
Neither brother's parents had attended Sherlock's funeral.
Mycroft's explanation was that he'd never told the Holmes parents their son had died at all—only that he'd gone away somewhere on business.
Not only that—Mycroft had arranged to have the Holmeses relocated from their old home to somewhere safer.
The Dursleys of Privet Drive, and Hermione's parents, had been handled the same way.
Of the Order's core members, only the three of them had Muggle relatives at all.
By Mycroft's reasoning, either Voldemort or Moriarty might move against them.
As for the half-blood wizards—Cho Chang's father had simply stayed in Asia.
In that far away land, even a Dark Lord as powerful as Voldemort would find himself out of reach.
"Speaking of which, Madam Chang and Miss Chang will be arriving in the next couple of days."
Harry had just been thinking of Cho Chang when Dumbledore brought up the very subject.
"Huh?"
Harry couldn't help but start—if he hadn't known it was impossible, he might almost have believed Dumbledore had used Legilimency on him.
But the thought of Legilimency alone was enough to send fury blazing up in him—hair-raising, blood-boiling rage.
One despicable name surfaced in his mind.
Severus Snape.
That bastard who had led the Death Eaters into the school, thrown in his lot with Voldemort, and killed Sherlock!
After that night, he had confronted Dumbledore furiously, again and again:
This is the Snape you gave your absolute trust to?
Look what he's done.
Dumbledore had had nothing to say to that. Because of it, Harry had gone a very, very long stretch of time without speaking to him again.
Eventually, everyone had come, one after another, to talk him around.
In the end, it was Hermione's reasoning that finally won him over—that even Sherlock himself had never once stopped believing in Snape.
And besides, no one had suffered more over Snape's betrayal than Dumbledore himself.
So, at Lupin and Tonks's wedding, with Dumbledore standing as the officiant, Harry had finally made his peace with him.
"Harry, I have a feeling."
Just as Harry was turning these things over in his mind, he heard Dumbledore say:
"The turning point of this war is coming, and soon."
Question: What was the turning point of the Second World War?
The Normandy landings Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor The Battle of Stalingrad The founding of the International Anti-Fascist Alliance
In some country, some place, at some hour, a group of people were arguing fiercely.
"It's obviously C. What's even the question?"
"Oh? Go on, give your reasons."
"Because it didn't just turn the tide on the Soviet-German front—it fundamentally shifted the whole strategic balance of the war. It's what flipped the fascist powers from strategic offense to the anti-fascist alliance's strategic counteroffensive!"
"Bollocks. It's obviously B! After Pearl Harbor, the Americans got into the war—that's when the real turning point happened!"
"You're the one talking bollocks! America was nothing but an arms dealer making a killing off the war, selling weapons to both sides!"
"Ha! Selling weapons doesn't count as 'getting into the war.'"
"Oh, please. That poor country's only been gone a few decades and you're already talking like this."
"Exactly—give it a few more decades and you lot will be saying it was the Americans who marched into Berlin and planted the flag on the Reichstag roof!"
Watching the group argue themselves red in the face over the question, Mycroft Holmes shook his head and stepped out of the room.
A tall woman said nothing, but immediately followed him out.
A moment later, she drove Mycroft to a house that looked entirely unremarkable.
Umbrella in hand, Mycroft got out of the car, pushed open the door, and went inside, all in one smooth motion.
Inside, a stooped, disabled old man stared at him in evident surprise.
His gaunt, withered face showed through a beard gone half-grey, and under his right arm he carried no fewer than a dozen books.
"You may not welcome me here, but I still have to say it."
Ignoring the man's apparent surprise, Mycroft said: "The holiday is over."
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