“That’s enough, Phineas,” said Dumbledore.
Harry turned his back on Dumbledore and stared determinedly out of the window. He could see the Quidditch stadium in the distance. Sirius had appeared there once, disguised as the shaggy black dog, so he could watch Harry play… he had probably come to see whether Harry was as good as James had been… Harry had never asked him…
“There is no shame in what you are feeling, Harry,” said Dumbledore’s voice. “On the contrary… the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength.”
Harry felt the white-hot anger lick his insides, blazing in the terrible emptiness, filling him with the desire to hurt Dumbledore for his calmness and his empty words.
“My greatest strength, is it?” said Harry, his voice shaking as he stared out at the Quidditch stadium, no longer seeing it. “You haven’t got a clue… you don’t know…”
“What don’t I know?” asked Dumbledore calmly.
It was too much. Harry turned around, shaking with rage.
“I don’t want to talk about how I feel, all right?”
“Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human—”
“THEN—I—DON’T—WANT—TO—BE—HUMAN!” Harry roared, and he seized the delicate silver instrument from the spindlelegged table beside him and flung it across the room; it shattered into a hundred tiny pieces against the wall. Several of the pictures let out yells of anger and fright, and the portrait of Armando Dippet said, “Really!”
“I DON’T CARE!” Harry yelled at them, snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace. “I’VE HAD ENOUGH, I’VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON’T CARE ANY MORE—”
He seized the table on which the silver instrument had stood and threw that, too. It broke apart on the floor and the legs rolled in different directions.
“You do care,” said Dumbledore. He had not flinched or made a single move to stop Harry demolishing his office. His expression was calm, almost detached. “You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.”
“I—DON’T!” Harry screamed, so loudly that he felt his throat might tear, and for a second he wanted to rush at Dumbledore and break him, too; shatter that calm old face, shake him, hurt him, make him feel some tiny part of the horror inside himself.
“Oh, yes, you do,” said Dumbledore, still more calmly. “You have now lost your mother, your father, and the closest thing to a parent you have ever known. Of course you care.”
“YOU DON’T KNOW HOW I FEEL!” Harry roared. “YOU—STANDING THERE—YOU—” But words were no longer enough, smashing things was no more help; he wanted to run, he wanted to keep running and never look back, he wanted to be somewhere he could not see the clear blue eyes staring at him, that hatefully calm old face. He turned on his heel and ran to the door, seized the doorknob again and wrenched at it.
But the door would not open.
Harry turned back to Dumbledore.
“Let me out,” he said. He was shaking from head to foot.
“No,” said Dumbledore simply.
For a few seconds they stared at each other.
“Let me out,” Harry said again.
“No,” Dumbledore repeated.
“If you don’t—if you keep me in here—if you don’t let me—”
“By all means continue destroying my possessions,” said Dumbledore serenely. “I daresay I have too many.”
He walked around his desk and sat down, behind it, watching Harry.
“Let me out,” Harry said yet again, in a voice that was cold and almost as calm as Dumbledore’s.
“Not until I have had my say,” said Dumbledore.
“Do you—do you think I want to—do you think I give a—I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU’VE GOT TO SAY!” Harry roared. “I don’t want to hear anything you’ve got to say!”
“You will,” said Dumbledore steadily. “Because you are not nearly as angry with me as you ought to be. If you are to attack me, as I know you are close to doing, I would like to have thoroughly earned it.”
“What are you talking—?”
“It is my fault that Sirius died,” said Dumbledore clearly. “Or should I say, almost entirely my fault—I will not be so arrogant as to claim responsibility for the whole. Sirius was a brave, clever and energetic man, and such men are not usually content to sit at home in hiding while they believe others to be in danger. Nevertheless, you should never have believed for an instant that there was any necessity for you to go to the Department of Mysteries tonight. If I had been open with you, Harry, as I should have been, you would have known a long time ago that Voldemort might try and lure you to the Department of Mysteries, and you would never have been tricked into going there tonight. And Sirius would not have had to come after you. That blame lies with me, and with me alone.”
Harry was still standing with his hand on the doorknob but was unaware of it. He was gazing at Dumbledore, hardly breathing, listening yet barely understanding what he was hearing.
“Please sit down,” said Dumbledore. It was not an order, it was a request.
Harry hesitated, then walked slowly across the room now littered with silver cogs and fragments of wood, and took the seat facing Dumbledore’s desk.
“Am I to understand,” said Phineas Nigellus slowly from Harry’s left, “that my great-great-grandson—the last of the Blacks—is dead?”
“Yes, Phineas,” said Dumbledore.
“I don’t believe it,” said Phineas brusquely.
Harry turned his head in time to see Phineas marching out of his portrait and knew that he had gone to visit his other painting in Grimmauld Place. He would walk, perhaps, from portrait to portrait, calling for Sirius through the house…
“Harry, I owe you an explanation,” said Dumbledore. “An explanation of an old man’s mistakes. For I see now that what I have done, and not done, with regard to you, bears all the hallmarks of the failings of age. Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young… and I seem to have forgotten, lately…”
The sun was rising properly now; there was a rim of dazzling orange visible over the mountains and the sky above it was colourless and bright. The light fell upon Dumbledore, upon the silver of his eyebrows and beard, upon the lines gouged deeply into his face.
“I guessed, fifteen years ago,” said Dumbledore, “when I saw the scar on your forehead, what it might mean. I guessed that it might be the sign of a connection forged between you and Voldemort.”
“You’ve told me this before, Professor,” said Harry bluntly. He did not care about being rude. He did not care about anything very much any more.
“Yes,” said Dumbledore apologetically. “Yes, but you see—it is necessary to start with your scar. For it became apparent, shortly after you rejoined the magical world, that I was correct, and that your scar was giving you warnings when Voldemort was close to you, or else feeling powerful emotion.”
“I know,” said Harry wearily.
“And this ability of yours—to detect Voldemort’s presence, even when he is disguised, and to know what he is feeling when his emotions are roused—has become more and more pronounced since Voldemort returned to his own body and his full powers.”
Harry did not bother to nod. He knew all of this already.
“More recently,” said Dumbledore, “I became concerned that Voldemort might realise that this connection between you exists. Sure enough, there came a time when you entered so far into his mind and thoughts that he sensed your presence. I am speaking, of course, of the night when you witnessed the attack on Mr. Weasley—”
“Yeah, Snape told me,” Harry muttered.