Dumbledore and Grindelwald's Final Home

The scene shifted to Hogwarts.

Candlelight flickered in the headmaster's office, warm but unable to dispel the heavy atmosphere. Fawkes circled beneath the vaulted ceiling, his song no longer clear and bright, but transformed into an unending lament.

Skylar laid the barely breathing Dumbledore upon the bed, then dropped to one knee and took out a potion shimmering with golden-red light—the "Phoenix Immortality Potion." Carefully, he poured the liquid between the old man's dry lips.

The potion took effect quickly. Dumbledore's breathing gradually steadied, and the wound where the giant snake had bitten through him healed at a visible rate. Color returned to his withered skin. Yet when Dumbledore instinctively raised a hand and tried to summon the wand that had accompanied him all his life, nothing happened.

What he had lost was not merely a wand, but all of his magic. He could no longer sense the presence of magic at all. He was no different from a Muggle or a Squib now.

The Phoenix Immortality Potion had successfully pulled the critically wounded Dumbledore through the danger and preserved his life. But after losing his magic, this centenarian likely did not have many good days left to live.

Dumbledore leaned against the pillows, his silver-white beard and hair seeming to have lost their luster in the candlelight. He looked at Skylar. Those deep blue eyes that had once reflected wisdom and composure now held nothing but bottomless exhaustion and self-reproach.

"It was my fault," he said, his voice hoarse like an autumn wind scraping across dead branches. "I should have guided him sooner, more firmly. I always thought time was on our side. I thought the light in his heart was enough to withstand any darkness... I was wrong." He closed his eyes and fell silent for a long