his mind full of those things that had come to him in the grave, ideas that had taken shape in the darkness, ideas both fascinating and terrible.

The suddenness and completeness of death was with them like a presence.

“How in the name of Merlin’s pants have you managed to get your hands on those Horcrux books?”

He dug with a kind of fury, relishing the manual work, glorying in the non-magic of it, for every drop of his sweat and every blister felt like a gift to the elf who had saved their lives.

“He has, to use the common phrase, done a bunk,” replied Professor McGonagall,

Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.

Harry felt as though something inside him was falling, falling through the earth, leaving him forever.

The accusations he had heard from Muriel at the wedding seemed to have nested in his brain like diseased things, infecting his memories of the wizard he had idolized.

They say, still, that no Wizarding duel ever matched that between Dumbledore and Grindelwald in 1945.