"What a shame. If only I hadn't destroyed that soul fragment in my head. Then at least we might have been able to tell whether Voldemort was still alive," Harry said with some regret.
"Hmm, I don't think that would have been a good idea." Dumbledore shook his head.
Harry, the Order of the Phoenix, and the Ministry of Magic's members had returned to the United Kingdom in succession.
On the Ministry's side, Scrimgeour was not particularly satisfied with the outcome, though he could not exactly call himself dissatisfied either. They had failed to kill or capture Voldemort, their most important target.
But the combined force of Death Eaters and dark creatures that Voldemort had clearly gone to great pains to assemble had been almost completely wiped out.
Only Bellatrix and Wormtail remained. To say Scrimgeour was dissatisfied-well, he certainly was not entirely satisfied. But the situation really was not particularly bad either.
Most importantly, Voldemort had looked to be in terrible shape when he fled. Injuries of that severity would not be easy to recover from, even in the wizarding world.
The only thing that annoyed him somewhat was that the Dark Council had turned up to cause trouble again.
Scrimgeour could now be certain that the Dark Council had been responsible for intercepting them several years ago and "killing" Wormtail while he was in their custody.
Only, evidently, they had later used some special means to revive Wormtail, whom the Ministry believed to be dead.
Using certain methods to feign death was not difficult for wizards. Although deceiving experienced wizards was no easy task, it was not impossible with sufficiently sophisticated methods.
And at the time, because Cornelius Fudge, who was still Minister, had wanted to hush the matter up as quickly as possible, the Ministry had hurriedly