The silence in the headmaster's office had a particular quality — the kind that fell when a room full of people all arrived at the same understanding at the same moment.
Kevin spoke first.
"My parents," he said. Not a question.
"Yes," Flamel said, and didn't soften it. "What you experienced when you were — temporarily — on the other side of the veil was genuine. Their consciousness is preserved in the bracelet, as it has been since they died. They didn't reincarnate. They couldn't, once the bracelet had marked them." A pause. "They are aware. They have been aware, in there, for over a decade."
Kevin stood very still.
"The bracelet's design," Flamel continued, "prevents the consciousness from dissolving quickly when there are no new souls entering. It's a sort of equilibrium — the stored souls circulate in the energy and remain intact, as long as the bracelet continues to function. Introduce more souls? The new energy disrupts the balance. The older consciousnesses fade." He folded his hands. "My student's soul is in there as well. He wore the first version himself. When he died, the bracelet that had been stolen collected him as it had been designed to do."
"He spent a lifetime consuming souls," Flamel said, quietly, "and became food for them in the end. I don't know whether to call that justice or tragedy."
Ron was looking at the window. Draco was looking at the floor. Harry was watching Kevin.
Kevin was looking at the bracelet.
"You said it was fixable," he said.
"It is." Flamel was straightforward about it. "Destroy the bracelet. Shut down the mechanism entirely. Any souls currently held inside are released — freed to reincarnate as they should have been when they died."
"Including my parents."
"Yes."
Kevin absorbed this.
"And the conscious layer — the part of them that can think and remember and talk. That survives the release?"
"No," Flamel said, gently. "The consciousness is an artifact of the bracelet's containment. It's not a full soul — it's more like a portrait, if you understand the comparison. When the bracelet is destroyed, the energy that sustains it is gone. What remains is the true soul, freed to continue on naturally."
"They disappear," Kevin said. "The versions of them that I talked to."
"Yes. But the souls — the complete, real souls — go on."
Kevin said nothing for a long moment.
Hermione moved closer. Her shoulder against his.
"Kevin." Her voice was quiet. "Whatever you decide."
He looked at the bracelet. At the small, steady glow of it.
He thought about his parents in that flower field — his father laughing too loudly, his mother delivering targeted hits to the back of his head, both of them impossibly warm and real and clearly, clearly fine about being there.
They weren't fine. That was the truth of it. They were waiting inside a soul-trap, sustained by stolen energy, held back from whatever came next by a piece of jewellery they'd worn because they'd loved each other and not known what it cost.
He thought about what he'd told Dumbledore, years ago now, when Dumbledore had proposed something that would chain the living to obligations incurred by the dead.
The living shouldn't be chained by the dead.
He'd thrown those words at the headmaster as though they were obvious. As though he'd always known them.
He looked at Dumbledore now, and Dumbledore looked back at him, and neither of them said anything, because nothing needed to be said.
Kevin looked at the bracelet one more time.
"Destroy it," he said. "Both of them."
Flamel nodded, with the weight of someone who had been waiting a very long time to be able to do this.
Kevin took the bracelet off. He set it on the desk.
Hermione, beside him, unclasped hers without hesitation.
They lay side by side — two small silver bands, ordinary-looking, no glow now. Just metal.
Kevin put his hand over both of them.
He thought: I know you'd tell me to. I know you already have.
He pressed down, and the magic took.