Dumbledore's Funeral

The door to the Hospital Wing flew open and struck the stone wall with a dull thud.

Snape strode in, his face paler than usual and the dark circles beneath his eyes pronounced. There was no telling how long he had gone without sleep.

"What did you say to Dumbledore?" His voice was horribly hoarse, like sandpaper scraping against rough stone.

Harry's fingers tightened unconsciously around the bedsheet.

Looking at the anguish churning in Snape's eyes, she felt as though an invisible hand had closed around her throat.

"I don't know..." Her voice was barely audible. "I really don't know..."

Harry's pain was clearly reflected in Snape's eyes. His stern face gradually softened, and at last he sighed and reached out, resting his long, bony fingers gently on the top of her head.

The gesture was so gentle, a striking contrast to his usual severity.

"It's all right." His voice held a rare trace of tenderness. "Don't be afraid."

Harry felt a sting in her nose. She took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. "Professor... was there anything Dumbledore was fixated on?"

Snape's body visibly stiffened for an instant.

"No." He answered too quickly, too decisively.

Voldemort sneered in Harry's mind. "He's lying."

"Really?" Harry looked up, meeting Snape's eyes directly.

Their gazes met.

A long silence fell over the Hospital Wing.

"Yes," Snape finally said, his voice as low as an echo from deep underground. "But you don't need to know now."

He turned, and as he passed the sleeping Ron, he slapped the red-haired boy mercilessly on the back of the head.

"Get up, Weasley," he said coldly. "Harry doesn't need you watching over her. She can manage on her own."

Ron got to his feet with a grimace. Though reluctant to leave, he followed the professor out under the weight of Snape's authority. Before leaving, he silently mouthed to Harry that he would come back later.

As the door closed with a soft click, Harry finally let herself sink into the whirlpool of her emotions.

It's all my fault.

The thought coiled around her heart like a venomous snake.

Self-reproach spread through her like a rising tide, and the darkness within her continued to grow. Self-blame, guilt, weariness with life and other emotions tangled together.

If I didn't exist... if I'd died from the very beginning, then so many people wouldn't have died because of me.

Her nails dug deep into her palms, but she felt no pain.

Those moments of despair kept flashing through her mind. Every breath was like chewing up shards of glass and swallowing them, the fragments scraping down her esophagus and cutting into her stomach, leaving her insides a bloody mess.

"Though I hate to interrupt your self-reproach," Voldemort's voice suddenly cut in, disrupting Harry's self-loathing, "I have to point out that whether you existed or not, they would all have died."

"They were in my way," Voldemort continued, a twisted pleasure in his voice, as though he were happy to puncture Harry's excessive self-importance. "Honestly, the way you take yourself so seriously really puts me in a difficult position."

A week later, a grand funeral was held at Hogwarts, and everyone attended.

On the day of the funeral, the sky was an unnatural leaden gray, as though a pall had settled over the entire Wizarding World.

Dumbledore lay peacefully in a birchwood coffin, surrounded by flowers of every color.

His long silver-white hair had been carefully combed, his Half-moon Spectacles sat straight on his nose, and his hands were folded over his chest, a broken gold-and-red feather still twined around his fingers.

"I heard someone escaped from Nurmengard," Ron whispered in Harry's ear, his warm breath brushing her cold ear.

For once, he wore neatly pressed dress robes, and his red hair had been combed flat, making him look almost like a respectable young Pure-blood master.

It was only almost because the Weasley family was far too unconventional a Pure-blood family; the words "young Pure-blood master" would never come to mind when thinking of them.

Harry was about to respond when the snake-shaped bracelet on her wrist suddenly tightened. The sharp pain made her gasp. "Who?" she asked, forcing the words out.

"Grindelwald." Ron's eyes darted uneasily. "The Dark Lord of the previous generation. They say he's stayed in prison all these years because..." His voice grew quieter. "Because he was afraid of Dumbledore."

Harry frowned deeply.

She looked at the old man's peaceful face in the coffin and suddenly realized a terrible truth—the Wizarding World without Dumbledore would face the threat of two generations of Dark Lords at once.

Just then, the sky suddenly darkened.

An eerie black mist swept in from the direction of the Forbidden Forest, blotting out the already dim sunlight. The students screamed in terror, Professor McGonagall's wand blazed with a dazzling red light, and Snape had already moved in front of the coffin.

The black mist spiraled down like a living thing and gathered into a hunched figure.

He was an old man, so thin his features had become gaunt. Liver spots covered his bald scalp, a brand-new tag hung from his ill-fitting overcoat, and its empty sleeves fluttered in the wind.

It was clear that he had taken special care to dress himself on the way there, making himself look as respectable as possible.

"Move." His voice was hoarse and broken, as though he had not spoken in years, and the air escaping through his toothless gums made his words indistinct.

Snape remained motionless in front of the coffin. Their gazes clashed, and a dangerous light glimmered at the tips of both their wands.

After a long standoff, Snape slowly stepped aside.

Old Grindelwald paid Snape no further attention. He staggered forward, his twig-like fingers trembling as they touched Dumbledore's cheek.

In that instant, his expression grew infinitely tender, and cloudy tears rolled down his deeply wrinkled face.

"Albus..." he called softly, his voice full of half a century's longing and regret.

But the next second, his face suddenly twisted.

Wild laughter tore through the solemn atmosphere of the funeral. There was too much in that laughter-pain, anger, release, and a certain chilling joy.

By the time the laughter stopped abruptly, his wand was already pressed against his temple.

A silent flash of green light followed.

The old Dark Lord's body slowly slid down, finally collapsing beside Dumbledore.

His overcoat fell open, revealing a yellowed old photograph in its inner pocket. Harry picked up the photograph that had fallen beside her. In it, two young men stood with their arms around each other's shoulders beneath an oak tree in Godric's Hollow, smiling radiantly.

Voldemort's voice held a rare trace of bewilderment. "Grindelwald killed himself... why? With Dumbledore dead, shouldn't he have returned to the world to carry on the great Pure-blood cause?"

Harry did not answer it.

Professor McGonagall's sobs broke the dead silence. The stern, kind and strong professor could finally no longer bear her grief and cried aloud.

Harry looked at the two figures lying together beside the coffin. She did not understand either. Had Grindelwald escaped from prison and traveled all that way just to kill himself in front of Dumbledore?

Why?

What exactly was their relationship?

Were they merely former close friends?