Before we start, I'd just like to thank Nancy for her great summary
of Chapter 1. There were several excellent responses, but perhaps not
quite as many as Nancy's post deserved so, instead of having a
summary of the posts, the chapter will stay open for further replies.
As soon as something interesting occurs to you on this or future
chapters, please share it with us in a post. We don't want to miss
anything!!!

And if you would like to introduce a chapter yourself, please contact
me, all offers gratefully received :-)



In Memoriam - Chapter Summary


This chapter opens with Harry bleeding as he opens his bedroom door
in Privet Drive, and then breaking the china cup of cold tea that is
outside his door. He assumes that the cup of tea is a booby trap set
by Dudley Dursley.

We are told that he has four days left during which he is not allowed
to perform magic. He makes a mental note to ask Hermione how to
repair wounds by magical means, rinses off the blood in the bathroom,
mops up the tea and returns to the bedroom, slamming the door.

He is emptying his school trunk completely, which he has not done
since he first packed it six years ago, removing from the bottom a
mulch of old quills, dessicated beetle eyes and single socks that no
longer fitted.

He finds a SUPPORT CEDRIC DIGGORY / POTTER STINKS badge, a cracked
and worn out Sneakoscope and the R.A.B.'s gold locket from the basin
in the cave. And he comes across the sharp edge that has caused the
bleeding; a two-inch-long fragment of the enchanted mirror that his
dead godfather, Sirius, had given him. He cannot find any more of it
except a glittering grit of powdered glass.

He puts it on an unread copy of the Daily Prophet and tries to stem
the sudden upsurge of bitter memories, the stabs of regret and of
longing that the discovery of the broken mirror had occasioned by
attacking the rest of the rubbish in the trunk.

He piles his abandoned school things in a corner, speculating that
the Dursleys will burn them. He puts his Invisibility Cloak, potion-
making kit, some books, letters, the photograph album from Hagrid and
his wand into an old rucksack, which already holds the Marauder's Map
and R.A.B.'s locket. 'The locket was accorded this place of honour
not because it was valuable - in all usual senses it was worthless -
but because of what it had cost to attain it'

Hedwig is asleep or else pretending to be asleep, she is angry that
she is not allowed out of her cage much.


Harry searches a pile of newspapers for one with a small article
about the resignation of Hogwarts Muggle Studies Teacher Charity
Burbage, because it has an article in it by Elphias Doge,
entitled 'ALBUS DUMBLEDORE REMEMBERED'.

Elphias describes himself as Dumbledore's friend, and Dumbledore
himself as the most inspiring and best loved of Hogwarts headmasters.
He sketches out Dumbledore's life where it intersects with his own,
from the time they met on their first day at Hogwarts: Doge having
dragon pox, and Dumbledore having a father who had been sent to
Azkaban, guilty of attacking three young muggles.

Doge describes Dumbledore as the most brilliant student ever seen at
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Two suitable careers are
described for him: Minister for Magic and teacher - Doge says
Dumbledore confessed to him that even as a student his greatest
pleasure lay in teaching.

Doge describes Aberforth's relationship with his brother Dumbledore
somewhat apologetically, and suggests that Aberforth, three years
younger and with a preference for duelling over reasoned discussion,
felt outshone by Dumbledore.

After Hogwarts, Dumbledore and Doge were about to go on a world tour
when Kendra, Dumbledore's mother, died, leaving him the head and sole
breadwinner of charge of the family. While Doge undertakes the year's
tour alone, meeting with Chimaeras in Greece and alchemists'
experiments in Egypt, he hears that Dumbledore's sister Ariana, who
has been in poor health for a long time, has died. 'All those closest
to Albus - and I count myself one of that lucky number - agree that
Ariana's death and Albus's feeling of personal responsibility for it
(though, of course, he was guiltless) left their mark upon him
forever more.'

He describes Dumbledore at that point as a young man who had
experienced a much older person's suffering, and as estranged from
Aberforth, until their relationship became not a close but a cordial
one in later years.

He lists among Dumbledore's achievements the discovery of the twelve
uses of dragon's blood, the post of Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot
and the triumph over Grindelwald in the duel in 1945, comparing this
latter achievement as a turning point in magical history similar to
the introduction of the International Statute of Secrecy or the
downfall of He Who Must Not Be Named.

He finishes by describing him as never proud or vain, able to find
something of value in anyone, endowed with great humanity and
sympathy, working always for the greater good, and, 'to his last
hour, as willing to stretch out a hand to a small boy with dragon pox
as he was on the day that I met him.'

The picture accompanying Dumbledore's obituary seems to x-ray Harry.
Harry realises that he didn't really know Dumbledore very well,
making him feel both sad and humiliated, and wishes he had asked him
some personal questions while he still had the chance, 'even though
the only personal question he had ever asked his Headmaster was also
the only one he suspected that Dumbledore had not answered honestly:
'What do you see when you look in the Mirror?'
'I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woollen socks.' '

Harry tucks the newspaper cutting inside the first volume of
Practical Defensive Magic and its Use Against the Dark Arts.

The latest Daily Prophet, which he has so far scanned only to see if
it contains information about Voldemort, has an article by Betty
Braithwaite, entitled DUMBLEDORE - THE TRUTH AT LAST?, heralding the
publication the following week of Rita Skeeter's book 'The Life and
Lies of Albus Dumbledore'.

There follows an interview with Rita Skeeter who, we learn, completed
her nine-hundred-page book four weeks after Dumbledore's 'mysterious'
death in June. Betty mentions Special Advisor to the Wizengamot,
Doge's, widely publicised remarks that 'Skeeter's book contains less
fact than a Chocolate Frog Card.'
Rita ripostes:

'Darling Dodgy! I remember interviewing him a few years back about
merpeople rights, bless him. Completely gaga, seemed to think we were
sitting at the bottom of Lake Windermere, kept telling me to watch
out for trout.'

'You know as well as I do how much information can be generated by a
fat bag of Galleons, a refusal to hear the word 'no' and a nice sharp
Quick-Quotes Quill!'

'Nobody hearing him rage against You-Know-Who would have dreamed that
he dabbled in the Dark Arts himself in his youth! And for a wizard
who spent his later years pleading for tolerance, he wasn't exactly
broad-minded when he was younger!'

She goes on to accuse him of 'an extremely murky past', 'a very fishy
family' that he kept hushed up, and says that here she is referring
to his mother and sister rather than to 'a brother with a fondness
for fiddling about with goats' and a 'Muggle-maiming father'. She
also speculates on whether his brilliant achievements are actually
his, and says that Ivor Dillonsby claims he had already discovered
eight uses of dragon's blood when Dumbledore 'borrowed his papers'.
She casts doubt on the reality of the duel with Grindelwald and
describes the Potter-Dumbledore relationship as 'unhealthy, even
sinister' and says that Dumbledore took an unnatural interest in
Potter from the word go that wasn't in the boy's best interests, and
blames Harry's 'troubled adolescence' on this relationship. Skeeter
goes on to claim, on the strength of her two previous interviews with
Harry, to be one of the only people alive who can say that they know
the real Harry Potter. She then goes on to say 'eye witnesses inside
Hogwarts Caste saw Potter running away from the scene moments after
Dumbledore fell, jumped or was pushed. Potter later gave evidence
against Severus Snape, a man against whom he has a notorious grudge.'


Harry screws up the paper and throws it at the wall where it lands
amongst the rubbish by the bin. He bellows 'Lies' as random phrases
from Rita's article echo in his head.

Suddenly he sees a flash of blue in the fragment of Sirius' mirror,
and assumes that it is because he was thinking about Dumbledore. 'If
anything was certain, it was that the bright blue eyes of Albus
Dumbledore would never pierce him again.'



Chris