Speaker 1: Hath still ears there are few figures in the wizarding
Speaker 1: world who carry the kindly head master, with the silver
Speaker 1: beard and the half moon spectacles and the long curling fingers.
Speaker 1: He was the man who handed out lemon drops and
Speaker 1: pulled silver instruments out of his pocket, and twinkled at
Speaker 1: the students as though he had read the answers to
Speaker 1: their examinations before they sat down. He was the man
Speaker 1: who forgave, who smiled, who spoke in soft aphorisms about
Speaker 1: choices and consequences. He was, in short, the image of
Speaker 1: the wise grandfather. He was a chess player. He was
Speaker 1: a man who kept secrets that cost lives. He was
Speaker 1: a man who groomed a child for sacrifice from the
Speaker 1: night that child was left on a door step. And
Speaker 1: he was also, in his own strange and painful way,
Speaker 1: a man who loved the world enough to do all
Speaker 1: of those things. He was a choice of secrets, the builder,
Speaker 1: the bates a round being file. We're not here to
Speaker 1: talk about that image. We are here to talk about
Speaker 1: what was underneath it, the widge, the lacks of trent
Speaker 1: Vaus at home. It was enough of your myriess for
Speaker 1: our jester standers. We are going to feel our way
Speaker 1: along the walls. We are going to notice the things
Speaker 1: that have been there all along, that it's something that
Speaker 1: we are Elbus deviled, the boss of Eldest Dunbury lived
Speaker 1: in a stone house at the bend of a lane,
Speaker 1: and the kind of slow countryside quiet that we do
Speaker 1: not often see anymore. Baberforth came Abbey Arbury. Ariana was
Speaker 1: the youngest. She was six years younger than Albus. She
Speaker 1: had a barter and more stubborn of the two brothers,
Speaker 1: and who would grow up to run the hogshead in
Speaker 1: the garden behind the house. She could not be trusted
Speaker 1: to a look. The power came out of her, an
Speaker 1: unpredictable burst, sometimes as bright light and sometimes as something
Speaker 1: darker and sharper. She could not be trusted to be alone.
Speaker 1: She could not be trusted to be safe, and so
Speaker 1: Kendra Bambury. Arianna was the youngest. She was six years
Speaker 1: younger than Albus. The most fragile of the three. Toronto
Speaker 1: was damaged withdrew the families from the world. She moved
Speaker 1: them inward. She kept Arianna at harm. Arianna was the youngest.
Speaker 1: There are thunderness to the Ministry of Magic in some
Speaker 1: choir's department no one ever bothered to name. But after
Speaker 1: the incident in the garden, none of that mattered. The
Speaker 1: family became reclusive. The aunt came when she could, the
Speaker 1: father stayed away more and more, and the children grew
Speaker 1: up in a house that was heavy with things that
Speaker 1: no one talked about, which is the worst kind of
Speaker 1: house for a child with a curious mind mind. Albas,
Speaker 1: who had been a brilliant student even as a small boy,
Speaker 1: began to read everything he could get his hands on.
Speaker 1: He read the books that his mother kept on the
Speaker 1: high shelves. He read the books that Bethilda lent him
Speaker 1: when she visited. He read the books that he could
Speaker 1: get his hands on. He read the books that his
Speaker 1: mother kept on the numbers plays Apiu. He dug it away.
Speaker 1: Arthur Coarse sentenced him to life in ascabin purseval Dumbledore
Speaker 1: never returned. He died in that prison on a stone
Speaker 1: floor with dementors for company. Having refused to tell the
Speaker 1: ministry why he had done what he did, he died
Speaker 1: protecting his daughter's seeks. And Umbus, who was nine, lend
Speaker 1: another lesson. That night he learned that the laws of
Speaker 1: the wizarding world were written to protect the powerful, not
Speaker 1: the broken. He learned that the laws of the wizarding
Speaker 1: world were written to protect the powerful, not the broken.
Speaker 1: He learned that the world was not on his side,
Speaker 1: and he learned it at exactly the age when a
Speaker 1: boy like arbas family is silenced rather than the Muggle police.
Speaker 1: His parents, her soldiers, and his sister. He stayed with
Speaker 1: him when he came back to Britain as the conqueror
Speaker 1: of Grindewald, and it stayed with him when he put
Speaker 1: Harry Potter on a door step nearly eighty years later.
Speaker 1: When his mother died three years after Perceval, Albus was
Speaker 1: left with the responsibility of caring for Ariana alone. Abberforth
Speaker 1: had already been pulled out of Hogwarts to help. He
Speaker 1: had finished his schooling by correspondents or not at all,
Speaker 1: the records are unclear, but he was never again the
Speaker 1: scholar that his older brother was. The two brothers took
Speaker 1: care of their sister in shifts. They took care of
Speaker 1: the house. They took care of the house. They took
Speaker 1: care of the few possessions they had inherited. They did
Speaker 1: not for several years do anything else. Albus had been
Speaker 1: a brilliant student. He had been offered a job at
Speaker 1: the ministry. He had been offered at Thin came the
Speaker 1: summer of eighteen ninety nine. Almbus was seventeen. He had
Speaker 1: finished his schooling of Hogwarts two years earlier, having left
Speaker 1: with no real plan except a care for his mother
Speaker 1: and his damaged sister while his brother finished at the school.
Speaker 1: He had no money, he had no prospects, He had
Speaker 1: no real hope of leaving Goderich's Hollow for any reason
Speaker 1: other than the slow grind of family obligation. And then
Speaker 1: one afternoon in June, his aunts came to visit. His
Speaker 1: aunt's was called Bathtilda Bagshot. She lived not far from
Speaker 1: Godric's Hollow. She lived not far Grandebald had been expelled
Speaker 1: from Domstag. He had come to Godric's Hollow to stay
Speaker 1: with his great arm Bethilda for the summer, and he
Speaker 1: had no intention of spending that summer quietly. He was already,
Speaker 1: by seventeen, the most ambitious wizard of his generation. He
Speaker 1: had read more than most adults, He had thought more
Speaker 1: than most adults. He had a plan for the world,
Speaker 1: and he was looking for some one to share it.
Speaker 1: He found Albus. Within hours of meeting him, the two
Speaker 1: boys walked in the garden together. They talked about magic,
Speaker 1: and about the future, and about the terrible things that
Speaker 1: wizards had done to each other in the past. Within
Speaker 1: a few days, they were sharing a single note book.
Speaker 1: Within a few weeks, they were writing a manifesto that
Speaker 1: would have changed the wizarding World forever. They called their
Speaker 1: manifesto in the slightly theatrical way that young men with
Speaker 1: grand ambitions sometimes do the greater good. They would I
Speaker 1: do that? Why you had a have to lass? They
Speaker 1: are spiritual. They agreed that the wizarding World had hidden
Speaker 1: itself away for too long. They agreed that muggles had
Speaker 1: grown dangerous and powerful, and that the wizarding World had
Speaker 1: a responsibility to take control before muggles destroyed themselves and
Speaker 1: everyone else with them. They made a blood pack that summer.
Speaker 1: The details of that pact have never been shared with
Speaker 1: the public, but the records of the Wizarding World confirmed
Speaker 1: that there was one. The two boys promised each other
Speaker 1: something in blood that they could not break, even if
Speaker 1: they wanted to. Whatever the promise was, it bound them
Speaker 1: together for the rest of Grandewald's life. There were nights
Speaker 1: in those weeks when Abbas stayed up until the small
Speaker 1: hours talking with grand to Wald in the garden while
Speaker 1: the moon went down. They talked about the courteted a brecture,
Speaker 1: about how things ought to be. And in those talks,
Speaker 1: Ablis Dambledore was, for once in his life, not the
Speaker 1: lonely boy with the broken sister. He was the brilliant
Speaker 1: young wizard with the brilliant young friend, and the two
Speaker 1: of them were going to fix the world together. There
Speaker 1: were no fears of Lance and the giants of the
Speaker 1: mountains and the ware will that lived in the wild places,
Speaker 1: and how all of these creatures had been abandoned by
Speaker 1: a wizarding world that had broke fat and powerful, and
Speaker 1: the two of them were going to fix the world together.
Speaker 1: But Albas had not told grind Alboard everything. He had
Speaker 1: not told him about Arianna, and that his mother was
Speaker 1: already exhausted by the long hours of caring for her.
Speaker 1: And when Aberforth found out that summer, the way brothers
Speaker 1: always find out about such things, he confronted Albus about it.
Speaker 1: He asked Albus how he could possibly go off on
Speaker 1: adventures with a stranger while their mother was dying and
Speaker 1: their sister was hurting. He asked Albus what kind of
Speaker 1: man he was but coming, and the answer in the
Speaker 1: end was a duel three ones, the two brothers and
Speaker 1: the stranger in the garden at the back of the house.
Speaker 1: The fight that followed was not clean. Spells flew, one's cracked,
Speaker 1: and in the middle of it all, Ariana walked out
Speaker 1: of the house to see what was happening. One of
Speaker 1: the spells that flew that afternoon struck her. We do
Speaker 1: not know that Arianna died at the end of that duel,
Speaker 1: and that the three men who were there never recovered
Speaker 1: from the part they played in it. Gruntwald left Godric's
Speaker 1: hollow the next morning. He did not stay for the funeral.
Speaker 1: He did not stay to apologize. He left, and Albus
Speaker 1: let him leave because the blood packed between them forbade
Speaker 1: them from fighting each other, and because Albus could not
Speaker 1: bring himself to look the other man in the eye
Speaker 1: and called him to account. The summer of eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: nine ended the way those kinds of summers always end,
Speaker 1: with one dead and two broken, and a third walking
Speaker 1: away into a life that would cost the world another
Speaker 1: sixty years of fear, and in the stone house at
Speaker 1: the bend of the lane Albus Dumbledore, who had been
Speaker 1: seventeen years old and brilliant and in love with nothing
Speaker 1: at all, and in love with nothing at all. What
Speaker 1: happened next is harder to talk about than the drool it. Instead,
Speaker 1: he wandered, He traveled through Europe, He stayed with old friends.
Speaker 1: He wrote letters that no one was meant to read.
Speaker 1: He did not speak about the death of his sister,
Speaker 1: and he did not speak about the death of his sister,
Speaker 1: And he did not speak about grendel Wald, and he
Speaker 1: did not speak about the plan that the two of
Speaker 1: them had written down in Bathilde Bagshot's garden that summer.
Speaker 1: He stayed out of the public eye. He stayed out
Speaker 1: of every kind of life that required him to care
Speaker 1: about what other people thought of him. There is a
Speaker 1: portrait of him painted in those years that hangs now
Speaker 1: in a museum of wizarding history. The man in the
Speaker 1: portrait is thin, the man in the portrait is bearded.
Speaker 1: But then, in the autumn of nineteen forty five, he
Speaker 1: finally did what the wizarding world had been waiting for
Speaker 1: some one to do. He went to face his old friend,
Speaker 1: the Hounk, pleasured into a war that had already lasted
Speaker 1: nearly two decades. He had stolen the Elder wand he
Speaker 1: had plunged the wizarding world into a war that had
Speaker 1: offered about in Betheld's garden, except that the man he
Speaker 1: had become was a tyrant rather than a savior, and
Speaker 1: Elbas Dumbledore was in chains and Elba's garden, except that
Speaker 1: the man he had become, with a past behind him,
Speaker 1: finally came. He came alone. He came into the highest
Speaker 1: tower of Noumngard. That day he was also walking out
Speaker 1: of the longest lie he had ever told, the lie
Speaker 1: that he was the kind of wizard who could be
Speaker 1: trusted with the welfare of the whole world. In that
Speaker 1: day forward, Balpous Dumbledore would spend every waking hour of
Speaker 1: his life trying to undo what he and Grande Wad
Speaker 1: had done together that summer. He would do it in private.
Speaker 1: He would do it slowly. He would do it with
Speaker 1: a smile on his face and a kind word for
Speaker 1: every one he met, and a sadness in his eyes
Speaker 1: that only the very closest of his friends ever saw.
Speaker 1: By the harp to be dinner more than once. He refused.
Speaker 1: Every time he received. Every time he was asked to
Speaker 1: be Minister of Magic, more than once he refused. Every
Speaker 1: time he was offered the position of Supreme Mougump of
Speaker 1: the International Confederation of Wizards. He accepted it steff alone
Speaker 1: to do the work he had set himself to do,
Speaker 1: and he knew that power, especially the kind of power
Speaker 1: that comes from being Minister of Magic, would get in
Speaker 1: the way of that work. He taught, he watched, he waited.
Speaker 1: There were in those years at Hogwarts students who remembered
Speaker 1: him long after they left. There was a boy called
Speaker 1: Elfhare's Doge who was at school with Elphus oberstock test
Speaker 1: and the long stone corridors that echoed when it rained.
Speaker 1: He he watched, he waited, he waited. There were in
Speaker 1: those years at Hogwarts students who remembered him long after
Speaker 1: they left. There was a boy called Elphire's Doge who
Speaker 1: was at school with Elphas, the talking portraits, and the
Speaker 1: long stone corridors that echoed when it rained. He taught,
Speaker 1: he watched, he waited. There were in those years at
Speaker 1: Hogwarts students who remembered him long after they left. There
Speaker 1: was even then the kind of man who cut stecres
Speaker 1: but on magic in the wage than parlace from a
Speaker 1: few years by then, and he had been hiding things,
Speaker 1: He had been stealing things, He had been using dark
Speaker 1: magic and other students when he thought no one was looking.
Speaker 1: And Albus, who had seen this kind of boy before,
Speaker 1: who had once been this kind of boy, help self
Speaker 1: decimated to take a particular interest in him. He did
Speaker 1: not expel tom Riddle, he did not turn him into
Speaker 1: the force of Priphets, and he let Tom Riddle apply
Speaker 1: for the post of defense against the dark art students.
Speaker 1: He watched, he waited, He cupped the post of defense
Speaker 1: against the Dark Art's teacher at the s world without
Speaker 1: rizarding world then think, and then on the seventh of
Speaker 1: November in the year nineteen eighty one, ready to face
Speaker 1: the dark Lord. He was somewhere else. We are not
Speaker 1: entirely sure where. What we do know is that he
Speaker 1: arrived at the ruins of the Potter House after the
Speaker 1: fight was already over, and that he was somewhere else
Speaker 1: We are not entirely sure where. What we do know
Speaker 1: is that he arrived at the ruins of the Potter
Speaker 1: house after the fight was already over, and then was
Speaker 1: the one who carried the child out of the wreckage.
Speaker 1: He was the one who put Harry Potter on the
Speaker 1: family with a letter, and that he had done here
Speaker 1: now we should not be too quick to judge him
Speaker 1: for that the killing curse had just rebounded off Harry
Speaker 1: and destroyed Vulamort's body. But the dark Lord was not dead.
Speaker 1: He was somewhere else waiting to return. And the prophecy,
Speaker 1: the prophecy that Dumbledore had heard from Siby Trilrnady in
Speaker 1: the winter of nineteen eighty, said that neither could live
Speaker 1: while the other survived. So the protection had to last.
Speaker 1: It had to last until Harry was old enough to
Speaker 1: face the dark Lord himself. And the only magic that
Speaker 1: could keep a one year old wizard alive through the
Speaker 1: years when the dark Lord's followers were still hunting him
Speaker 1: was the old magic of love. So Albus made the
Speaker 1: cold calculation that a child's suffering was the price worth paying,
Speaker 1: and he made it alone. He did not ask any
Speaker 1: one's permission, He did not tell any one what he
Speaker 1: had done. He simply made the choice, and he put
Speaker 1: Harry Potter on the doorstep, and he walked away. But
Speaker 1: that is not the end of the story. The end
Speaker 1: of the story is that Albus Dumbler kept the secret.
Speaker 1: He kept it for another four years, while Harry went
Speaker 1: to Hogwatts and learned about the world of magic. He
Speaker 1: kept it while Harry asked him year after year why
Speaker 1: the killing curse had not killed him. He kept it
Speaker 1: while Harry looked at him with those green eyes and
Speaker 1: waited for an answer, And Albus smiled, and Albus gave
Speaker 1: him a lemon drop, and Albus told him that they
Speaker 1: would talk about it when Harry was older. The truth
Speaker 1: was that Albus Dumbler did not want Harry to know.
Speaker 1: He did not want Harry to know that he had
Speaker 1: been placed at the Dursleys on purpose. He did not
Speaker 1: want Harry to know, because if Harry knew, the chess
Speaker 1: game would fall apart. The protection would not work, the
Speaker 1: prophecy would not come true. And so Albus Stumbler lied,
Speaker 1: and he kept lying year after year, until the lie
Speaker 1: had become so familiar that he could no longer remember
Speaker 1: how to tell the truth. There were other lies, too,
Speaker 1: the lie about the Sword of Griffinder, the lie about
Speaker 1: the Diary the lie about who put the curse on
Speaker 1: the ring that was slowly killing him, and how Albus
Speaker 1: had found it, and why he had put it on
Speaker 1: in the first place. By the time Harry was sixteen,
Speaker 1: the lie eyes were beginning to pile up around Albus
Speaker 1: like snow. He knew it. He knew that Harry would
Speaker 1: find out eventually. He knew that the boy would look
Speaker 1: at him one day and see for the first time
Speaker 1: what was actually underneath the kindly grandfather mask. And he
Speaker 1: was right. On the night that Harry came to him
Speaker 1: with the prophecy in his hand and said that he
Speaker 1: would not let Volnorpud use the prophecy to find him,
Speaker 1: Albus Dumbledore finally told Harry the secret of Harcrux. He
Speaker 1: had to tell Harry that the prophecy could not be
Speaker 1: defeated by running. He had to tell Harry that the
Speaker 1: only way to win was to face it. And then,
Speaker 1: because he had run out of other ways to delay,
Speaker 1: Albus Dumbledore finally told Harry the secret of the Harcrux,
Speaker 1: and he was right on the night that Harry came
Speaker 1: to him with the prophecy in his hand and said
Speaker 1: that he would not let Vonorport use the prophecy to
Speaker 1: find him no matter where he went. He had to
Speaker 1: tell Harry that the only way to win was to
Speaker 1: face it. And then, because he had run out of
Speaker 1: other way. It was the most painful scene in all
Speaker 1: seven books. Harry, who had spent the whole summer enjoying
Speaker 1: his BlackBerry juice and his lemon drops, finally answered because
Speaker 1: he said he had wanted Harry to have a childhood,
Speaker 1: because he had wanted Harry to have a few more
Speaker 1: weeks of being a child before the burden settled on
Speaker 1: his shoulders, because he had wanted Harry to forgive him
Speaker 1: eventually for what he had done. And then in the
Speaker 1: same conversation, Abbas did something else that no one ever
Speaker 1: quite forgave him for what he had done. And then
Speaker 1: in the same conversation, Abbas did something else that no
Speaker 1: one ever quite forgave him for, but that the sorting
Speaker 1: hat had placed on him was heavier than Harry had
Speaker 1: been told. He looked Harry in the scyhe to fess
Speaker 1: a darkness that might be his own. And then in
Speaker 1: the same conversation, Habas did something else that no one
Speaker 1: ever quite forgave him, for he looked Harry in the
Speaker 1: eye and told him that he had to be sorted
Speaker 1: into slatherin, and that ful Martyr had been a slatherin,
Speaker 1: and that Harry had to face the possibility that he
Speaker 1: carried some of the dark Lord's nature inside him. We
Speaker 1: should look a young wizard who had loved a woman
Speaker 1: his whole life, and he used that love as a tool.
Speaker 1: He gave Snape a job, He gave Snape a purpose.
Speaker 1: He gave Snape the role of double agent, and the
Speaker 1: promise that he was protecting the son of the woman
Speaker 1: Snape had loved. And then when the moment finally came,
Speaker 1: he looked Snape in the eye and asked him to
Speaker 1: be the one to kill him. He asked him knowing
Speaker 1: that this was the last thing the man would ever
Speaker 1: do for the woman he had loved, and Snape ats
Speaker 1: it always. There were people who argued afterwards that Alpus
Speaker 1: Dumbledore asked and Snape did what he asked, and the
Speaker 1: dark Lord as a mother, told the truth of how
Speaker 1: Alpus died. That is the kind of trade that Alpus
Speaker 1: was willing to make. It is not the kind of
Speaker 1: trade that most of us would be willing to make,
Speaker 1: but Alpus was not most of us. There were people
Speaker 1: who argued afterwards that Alpus had no right to ask.
Speaker 1: There were people who argued that the whole arrangement was
Speaker 1: a kind of cruelty dressed up as heroism. They may
Speaker 1: have been right, We will never know for certain. What
Speaker 1: we do know is we come now to the end
Speaker 1: of the story. After the killing in the Astronomy Tower,
Speaker 1: after the fly of the Dark Lord from the grounds
Speaker 1: of Hogwarts, after the search for the haw cruxes that
Speaker 1: Harry and his friends undertook at Albas's instruction, the final
Speaker 1: battle came. It came at the end of a long
Speaker 1: year of running. It came in the grounds of Hogwarts,
Speaker 1: in the Great Hall, in the corridors and the towers
Speaker 1: of the school that Albus had loved for so long.
Speaker 1: The dark Lord came with his army. The Defenders came
Speaker 1: with theirs. The fighting went on for hours, and at
Speaker 1: the end of the fighting, when the last of the
Speaker 1: hawkcruxes had been destroyed and the dark Lord was finally
Speaker 1: truly mortal, we know how that ended. We know that
Speaker 1: the wizarding world was free. We know that the wizarding
Speaker 1: world was free, Know that the killing curse that the
Speaker 1: dark log but with Eblorus had We passed through the
Speaker 1: white limbo that recalled King's Cross. There was a bench,
Speaker 1: there was a stone, and there was a man sitting
Speaker 1: on the bench waiting for him. The man had silver
Speaker 1: hair and half moon spectacles. The man was smiling. The
Speaker 1: man stood up and offered Harry a seat, and he
Speaker 1: asked if Harry had any questions, and he answered them patiently,
Speaker 1: and he told the boy what he needed to know
Speaker 1: before he went back. He told him that the choice
Speaker 1: he had made to walk back into the forest and
Speaker 1: face the dark Lord was the right choice. And then
Speaker 1: he asked Harry if he had any other questions, and
Speaker 1: he answered them patiently. He said after that, we do
Speaker 1: not see Alba Stambodore again. He does not return in
Speaker 1: the body. He does not speak from a portrait. He
Speaker 1: does not advise anyone about what to do next. The
Speaker 1: man who spent his whole life running the wizarding world
Speaker 1: and manipulating the people in it and carrying the secrets
Speaker 1: of the future, finally steps out of the story. The
Speaker 1: chess game is over, the piece is are off the board,
Speaker 1: and what is left is the man himself. Sitting on
Speaker 1: a bench in a place that looks like King's Cross,
Speaker 1: waiting for nothing, asking for nothing, simply being what who
Speaker 1: always was underneath it all, a tired wizard who loved
Speaker 1: the world more than he knew how to say. We
Speaker 1: should pause before we close this story to ask ourselves
Speaker 1: the harder question. The question is where the goodness, the
Speaker 1: way we usually mean the word is the right measure
Speaker 1: for a man like him, Because the truth is that
Speaker 1: Albus Dumbledore was not good in the simple sense. He
Speaker 1: was not gentle in the simple sense. He did not
Speaker 1: love his sister in the simple sense. He did not
Speaker 1: even love Harry Potter in the simple sense. He did
Speaker 1: not love Several Snape in the simple sense. He did
Speaker 1: not even love Harry Potter in the simple sense. What
Speaker 1: he did all his lie. We should also ask the
Speaker 1: other question, the question of whether he was in the
Speaker 1: end happy. There is a portrait of Albus Dumbledore in
Speaker 1: the head Master's office at Hogwarts, and the portrait smiles
Speaker 1: and twinkles the way the living man used to smile
Speaker 1: and twinkle. But the man in the portrait is not
Speaker 1: the man who sits on the bench at King's Cross.
Speaker 1: The man in the portrait is the mask. The man
Speaker 1: on the bench is what was underneath. And what was
Speaker 1: underneath was a mad who had never been allowed to
Speaker 1: be happy, because the work was never done. There was
Speaker 1: always another halcrux to find. There was always another secret
Speaker 1: to keep. There was always another person to manipulate, and
Speaker 1: another lie to tell, and another year to get through.
Speaker 1: There was never a moment in the long life of
Speaker 1: Alba Stumbledore when he could put down the chess pieces
Speaker 1: and just be a man. There was never a moment
Speaker 1: when he could let himself rest. There was never a
Speaker 1: moment when the listener watching from a safe distance could
Speaker 1: say with any certainty that this man had found peace.
Speaker 1: He had not, He would not, And yet we should
Speaker 1: not be too quick to pity him, because pity, like goodness,
Speaker 1: is too small a world. He was a man who
Speaker 1: chose the world. He was a man who loved the
Speaker 1: wizarding world and the people in it, more than he
Speaker 1: loved his own comfort. He was a man who would
Speaker 1: rather be hated by the people he saved than be
Speaker 1: loved by the people he failed. He was the kind
Speaker 1: of man who lies in his grave, if there is
Speaker 1: a grave, smiling still because he knows that the boy
Speaker 1: he raised for sacrifice lived and loved and forgave him.
Speaker 1: That is not a small thing. That is the biggest
Speaker 1: thing a man like Albu Stumbledore could ever hope to do.
Speaker 1: And it is perhaps the closest any wizard in the
Speaker 1: history of the wizarding world has come to actual holiness,
Speaker 1: not the holiness of the saints, the holiness of the
Speaker 1: man who knew he was not a saint, and who
Speaker 1: carried the knowledge without flinching, and who walked into the
Speaker 1: dark anyway because there was a boy who needed him
Speaker 1: to walk into the dark. There is something that we
Speaker 1: should be careful about when we tell the story of
Speaker 1: Alba Stumbledore. It is easy to put him up on
Speaker 1: a shelf and forget that he was a man. It
Speaker 1: is easy to forgive him the lies, because the world
Speaker 1: he was fighting for was worth the lies. But there
Speaker 1: is another way to tell the story. There is another
Speaker 1: way to read it, and that way is to remember
Speaker 1: that the cost of his choices was real. The cost
Speaker 1: was paid by Grandeur Wald, who spent fifty years in
Speaker 1: his own prison and died there. The cost was paid
Speaker 1: by Arianna, who died in the dark Lord's shadder. Because
Speaker 1: Alba Stumbledore decided somewhere in his heart that it was
Speaker 1: worth letting the dark Lord rise in a forest. The
Speaker 1: cost was paid by every child who died in the
Speaker 1: dark Lord's shadder. The cost was paid by Hariyanne, who
Speaker 1: died in the dark Lord shader, because Albas Dumbledore decided
Speaker 1: somewhere in his heart that it was worth whit in
Speaker 1: the dark Lord rise in order to make sure that
Speaker 1: the one who would defeat him would be ready. And yet,
Speaker 1: and yet Albus Dumbler was not wrong. The world he
Speaker 1: was fighting for was worth the lies, the greater good,
Speaker 1: as he understood it was a real thing. The wizarding
Speaker 1: world survived because of him. Tom Riddle was defeated because
Speaker 1: of him. The boy who had no parents survived because
Speaker 1: of him. And when we look at the man in
Speaker 1: the end, on the bench, in the bright place, with
Speaker 1: the silver hair and the soft smile and the half
Speaker 1: moon spectacles, we should not see only the chess player.
Speaker 1: We should see the man who chose to let them go.
Speaker 1: We should see the man who chose love in the
Speaker 1: end over logic. We should see the man who was
Speaker 1: brave enough to face his own mistakes, and humble enough
Speaker 1: to admit that he yet made them, and wise enough
Speaker 1: to trust that the boy he had raised for sacrifice
Speaker 1: would do the right thing without him. So that is
Speaker 1: the story of Alba Stumbledore. It is a long story
Speaker 1: and a heavy one, and we have been walking through
Speaker 1: it for a long time. To night, the fire has
Speaker 1: burned down, the candle has guttered. The night outside is dark,
Speaker 1: and the world is quiet, and the listener, if there
Speaker 1: is one, is probably getting very sleepy. So let us
Speaker 1: leave Albus Dumbledore to his rest. Let us leave him
Speaker 1: sitting on his bench in the bright place, with no
Speaker 1: more secrets and no more lies, and no more chess
Speaker 1: games to play. Let us lie, leave him with the
Speaker 1: knowledge that the man he shaped, the man he sent
Speaker 1: out to face the dark Lord, came back alive, and
Speaker 1: came back who