Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7)

by J.K. Rowling

Now approaching his eighteenth birthday, Dumbledore left Hogwarts in a blaze of glory — Head Boy, Prefect, Winner of the Barnabus Finkley Prize for Exceptional Spell-Casting, British Youth Representative to the Wizengamot, Gold Medal-Winner for Ground-Breaking Contribution to the International Alchemical Conference in Cairo. Dumbledore intended, next, to take a Grand Tour with Elphias “Dogbreath” Doge, the dim-witted but devoted sidekick he had picked up at school. The two young men were staying at the Leaky Cauldron in London, preparing to depart for Greece the following morning, when an owl arrived bearing news of Dumbledore’s mother’s death. “Dogbreath” Doge, who refused to be interviewed for this book, has given the public his own sentimental version of what happened next. He represents Kendra’s death as a tragic blow, and Dumbledore’s decision to give up his expedition as an act of noble self-sacrifice. Certainly Dumbledore returned to Godric’s Hollow at once, supposedly to “care” for his younger brother and sister. But how much care did he actually give them? “He were a head case, that Aberforth,” says Enid Smeek, whose family lived on the outskirts of Godric’s Hollow at that time. “Ran wild. ’Course, with his mum and dad gone you’d have felt sorry for him, only he kept chucking goat dung at my head. I don’t think Albus was fussed about him, I never saw them together, anyway.” So what was Albus doing, if not comforting his wild young brother? The answer, it seems, is...

Excerpt from "The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore" written by Rita Skeeter