"Shall we take a walk together?"
Dumbledore said with a smile.
Sean nodded. The house before them had already been reduced to a single charred skeleton, still radiating blistering heat.
With a small, almost imperceptible flick of his wand, Professor Quirrell discreetly buried the ring that hadn't been completely destroyed.
He shot Sean a guarded look. Sean lifted a finger, and the battered ring was quietly drawn into the Wizard's Book.
Next, Sean would have to find a way to break Voldemort's curse.
"Professor, thank you," Sean said to Quirrell.
"Ah—ah… no, Mr. Green. I didn't help much at all…" Quirrell stammered.
"You faced Voldemort. You beat him back," Sean said.
"N-no… I—I… yes. I destroyed a part of him. Just a part…" Quirrell's knuckles whitened around his wand.
"The fact is, you did it, Professor.
Someone once told me the important thing is to keep fighting—fighting, and fighting again. Only then can evil be held in check, even if it can never be completely erased…"
Sean spoke slowly, his gaze drifting into the quiet night—to the patch of earth where the ring had just been buried.
Something dark, thick, and bloodlike seeped up through the soil.
It was a fragment—part of the ring, split into pieces.
When it cracked, all three of them heard that dreadful, agonized scream. It hadn't only come from the black fog—it had also come from the shattered thing itself.
Quirrell stood frozen, staring at the horrifying stain spreading across the ground.
"Your will is Quirrell's will," he said at last.
Not far away, Dumbledore watched their exchange with a genial, amused smile.
He didn't hurry. He looked, if anything, entertained.
Only when Quirrell Apparated away and the Pukwudgie butler slipped back into the Wizard's Book did Dumbledore tap his fingers and light his wand.
"Come along, my dear Mr. Green."
He raised his wand. The outline of his tall frame softened into a gentle halo.
Little Hangleton had been raked by a northwest wind for two straight days. In that tiny village, even the barking of dogs seemed muted.
The sky was an endless sheet of lead, except for a pale yellow bruise along the far eastern horizon—weak but stubborn, as though it meant to melt that leaden ceiling open, slowly, by force of will.
Seven or eight squat cottages crouched against the earth like beetles. Fresh straw stacks looked like withered wild fungi. Near them—and along the river a little farther off—the smell of wet soil carried spring on its breath.
"You know the story of the three brothers," Sean said into the indistinct darkness before dawn. "Beedle makes it clear: the second brother's lost love didn't truly return.
She was sent by Death to lure him into Death's grasp—so she was cold, distant, always just out of reach. Desperate-making."
"You think I ought to have realized that?" Dumbledore said.
"I don't know," Sean admitted after a moment.
"I don't know either, my boy. Those without hope can only endure life… You did well.
I know some futures people promise are sweet lies—yet look at me: I'm willing to be fooled one more time."
Dumbledore's gaze was deep. His robes stirred in the faint wind of the pre-dawn.
"The Elder Wand. The Resurrection Stone. The Invisibility Cloak.
They may be useful. I once seized them at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons.
How much wiser am I now? I can't say.
But I have understood one thing: I can never be the true conqueror of death, because a true conqueror would never try to flee from Death.
He would accept mortality gladly—and know that, in the world of the living, there are things far worse than dying.
Human beings have a talent for choosing what harms them most.
Even I—Albus Dumbledore—find the Cloak the easiest to refuse. Which only proves that even a clever man like me is, in the end, a great fool."
Dumbledore and Sean stepped over a straw stack.
They even found a snake, stiff with cold, stranded before spring could fully arrive.
"You are not a fool," Sean said.
"I'm glad you think so. And yet today my dear student guarded against me as though I were one.
Young voices that won't share anything with old ears—yes, that disappoints me."
Dumbledore lifted his brows, putting on a look of mock surprise.
Sean said nothing.
Dumbledore's smile shone bright, and Sean could see a faint flush at the tips of his ears.
The wind whispered. The sky was lightening.
That yellow smear on the horizon finally dissolved the leaden roof above.
"I once thought this was life's suffering," Dumbledore went on, chatting almost idly. "But you see—it's simply what life is.
And even if life is suffering… that's all right…"
"Why?" Sean asked softly.
He couldn't imagine how the Headmaster had resisted the Resurrection Stone's temptation.
The Stone—no matter how bittersweet the result—could, in the end, summon a soul.
For Dumbledore, that meant seeing Ariana. Seeing his mother and father. Telling them how deep his remorse ran…
"Because…" Dumbledore smiled, "…I've picked up my broken oar and set out again."
…
Hogwarts had only just heard its first rooster's crow.
Few students were awake at that hour.
In other words, only those still wandering the corridors—or those who hadn't slept at all—would hear that call.
Sean heard it, because he had only just returned to Hogwarts.
He'd come back via Fawkes the phoenix's Apparition.
It was an oddly delightful sensation: Sean felt as if he'd become a tongue of flame, riding the wind all the way into the castle.
More delightful still—Dumbledore had let go of his fixation on the Resurrection Stone.
Which meant Sean had time. Enough time to break the curse, and to test what it could do in the realm of souls.
Ravenclaw Tower was silent. As Sean read books about the Resurrection Stone, he also watched the "tiny phoenix" that had appeared on his desk.
A few seconds later, the little phoenix slipped into a peculiar photograph.
In that photograph, Dumbledore was smiling and blinking—his figure, for the first time, blooming into color.
Not long after, the tiny phoenix flew back out of Dumbledore's spot and played with the squirrel that had once darted out of Quirrell's place.
Sean looked out the window, his deep green eyes as still as a calm lake.
Meanwhile, in the Headmaster's office—
For once, an owl flew out carrying a letter that hadn't been sent in many years.
"…I write to you, this Easter… perhaps I encountered a lucky black cat.
To our surprise, it promises neither glory nor bliss—only the blessing of hope…"
~~~
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