THE BOY WHO LIVED
“No, thank you,” said Professor McGonagall coldly, as though
she didn’t think this was the moment for lemon drops. “As I say,
even if You-Know-Who has gone —”
“My dear Professor, surely a sensible person like yourself can call
him by his name? All this ‘You-Know-Who’ nonsense — for eleven
years I have been trying to persuade people to call him by his
proper name: Voldemort.” Professor McGonagall flinched, but Dum-
bledore, who was unsticking two lemon drops, seemed not to no-
tice. “It all gets so confusing if we keep saying ‘You-Know-Who.’ I
have never seen any reason to be frightened of saying Voldemort’s
name.”
“I know you haven’t,” said Professor McGonagall, sounding half
exasperated, half admiring. “But you’re different. Everyone knows
you’re the only one You-Know- oh, all right, Voldemort, was fright-
ened of.”
“You flatter me,” said Dumbledore calmly. “Voldemort had
powers I will never have.”
“Only because you’re too — well — noble to use them.”
“It’s lucky its dark. I haven’t blushed so much since Madam
Pomfrey told me she liked my new earmuffs.”
Professor McGonagall shot a sharp look at Dumbledore and
said, “The owls are nothing next to the rumors that are flying
around. You know what everyone’s saying? About why he’s disap-
peared? About what finally stopped him?”
It seemed that Professor McGonagall had reached the point she
was most anxious to discuss, the real reason she had been waiting
on a cold, hard wall all day, for neither as a cat nor as a woman had
she fixed Dumbledore with such a pi ercing stare as she did now. It
was plain that whatever “everyone” was saying, she was not going
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