“My dear boy, its remarkable effects were

“My dear boy, its remarkable effects were directed only at Voldemort, who had tampered so ill-advisedly with the deepest laws of magic. Only toward him was that wand abnormally powerful. Otherwise it was a wand like any other… though a good one, I am sure,” Dumbledore finished kindly.

Harry sat in thought for a long time, or perhaps seconds. It was very hard to be sure of things like time, here.

“He killed me with your wand.”

“He failed to kill you with my wand,” Dumbledore corrected Harry. “I think we can agree that you are not dead – though, of course,” he added, as if fearing he had been discourteous, “I do not minimize your sufferings, which I am sure were severe.”

“I feel great at the moment, though,” said Harry, looking down at his clean, unblemished hands. “Where are we, exactly?”

“Well, I was going to ask you that,” said Dumbledore, looking around. “Where would you say that we are?”

Until Dumbledore had asked, Harry had not known. Now, however, he found that he had an answer ready to give.

“It looks,” he said slowly, “like King’s Cross station. Except a lo cleaner and empty, and there are no trains as far as I can see.”

“King’s Cross station!” Dumbledore was chuckling immoderately. “Good gracious, really?”

“Well, where do you think we are?” asked Harry, a little defensively.

“My dear boy, I have no idea. This is, as they say, your party.”

Harry had no idea what this meant; Dumbledore was being infuriating. He glared at him, then remembered a much more pressing question than that of their current location.

“The Deathly Hallows,” he said, and he was glad to see that the words wiped the smile from Dumbledore’s face.

“Ah, yes,” he said. He even looked a little worried.

“Well?”

For the first time since Harry had met Dumbledore, he looked less than an old man, much less. He looked fleetingly like a small boy caught in wrongdoing.

“Can you forgive me?” he said. “Can you forgive me for not trusting you? For not telling you? Harry, I only feared that you would fail as I had failed. I only dreaded that you would make my mistakes. I crave your pardon, Harry. I have known, for some time now, that you are the better man.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Harry, startled by Dumbledore’s tone, by the sudden tears in his eyes.

“The Hallows, the Hallows,” murmured Dumbledore. “A desperate man’s dream!”

“But they’re real!”

“Real, and dangerous, and a lure for fools,” said Dumbledore. “And I was such a fool. But you know, don’t you? I have no secrets from you anymore. You know.”

“What do I know?”