When everything fell silent again, Voldemort let out a crazed laugh.
"Slave? Dumbledore, you actually called me a slave?"
The red glow in his eyes flared brightly. The wand clenched in his hand erupted with immense magical power, gathering the scattered dust back together into an even larger black dragon.
"You are wrong. The shackles of the weak cannot bind me!"
The black dragon looked down at Dumbledore, who seemed as insignificant as an ant beneath its feet. Its sharp teeth gleamed with a cold light.
Dumbledore showed no fear, even though the brilliant radiance at the tip of the Elder Wand had completely faded.
Voldemort lightly pointed his wand at him. "I did not submit to power. I chose to become power itself."
The black dragon opened its bloodied maw and spewed blazing flames.
Dumbledore waved the Elder Wand, assembling broken wooden racks and fragments of Prophecy Orbs into towering giants that tried to envelop the flames.
"Useless!" Voldemort hissed with a serpent-like laugh.
The flames breathed by the black dragon thickened, and the giants that touched them began to melt.
There was no longer any regret or expectation in Dumbledore's azure eyes. He no longer tried to salvage anything from that twisted soul.
He did not reinforce the giants on the verge of collapse, nor did he cast any dazzling spell. He merely raised the Elder Wand in his hand and aimed it at the black dragon before him.
"Tap—" It sounded like a pebble falling into water.
Centered on the tip of the Elder Wand, the entire Chamber of Prophecies seemed to have been cast into a tranquil lake, rippling outward in clear, silvery-white circles.
The silently spreading ripples swept past the melting giants, past the roaring black dragon, past the fragments dancing through the air, and