Chapter 48

The infirmary usually hosted young, healthy students suffering from relatively harmless and easily cured maladies, and the atmosphere in the room was at most times optimistic if not cheerful. But not this afternoon. The remains of the headmaster lay on a bed in the far corner, shrouded with a spare sheet. The arrival of McGonagall after her Transfiguration class meant that all four heads of house were present to share the shock of the fact of Dumbledore's death. They wanted to mourn, but that was a luxury that would have to wait.

"The students will have to be told," said Flitwick, his voice not quite so treble as usual, manifesting the emotion which in all other respects he had managed to suppress. Flitwick had been in the Great Hall when Snape had arrived, levitating a corpse-like shape wrapped in sheets and blankets, the unknowing students laughing and asking whether they were going to be taught anti-mummy charms. Flitwick had laughed too, until he saw the look on Snape's face and knew something was terribly wrong.

"We won't say anything just yet," said McGonagall. "We'll wait. We'll wait until Madam Pomfrey is back."

"Is there really any need to wait for Pomfrey?" asked Sprout. "After all, it's not like she can do anything. It's simply too late. That's no slur on you, Severus," she added, noting Snape's guilty look, "I'm sure you did everything you could."

Snape had done everything possible, but that had not been much. Dumbledore had collapsed instantly after drinking the potion, his own hands at his throat as he strove to breath. Snape had ripped from his neck the bezoar which hung on a chain, and forcing the headmaster's trembling jaws wide, shoved the object into the helpless man's mouth. The trembling had slowed, and then stopped, but instead of reviving, Dumbledore's tortured body arched up from the floor as he struggled to breath. Then he had fallen back to the floor and his eyes had closed. Snape had hustled Dumbledore back to the school in the shortest possible time, but had been devastated to learn that the school's healer, Madam Pomfrey, was in London for a conference, and was not expected back until that afternoon.

That would be soon now, thought Snape, looking out a window and seeing the shadows lengthen on the grounds. At first he had been eager for the healer's return, but as hope faded from him, he now dreaded Pomfrey's arrival. After examining the remains, Pomfrey would sign a death certificate, and it was this that Snape anticipated with anguish, his feelings a thousand times worse than that of a student who is quite sure he has failed his exams, waiting only for the arrival of report card to make it official.

There was a loud knocking on the infirmary door.

"Who's there?" called out McGonagall aggressively.

"It's me, of course," replied Madam Pomfrey. "Who did you think it would be? Now why am I locked out of my own infirmary?" she asked demandingly as McGonagall opened the door and then hastily closed it behind her, locking it once more.

Pomfrey glanced over McGonagall's shoulder. Her hand leaped to her mouth, and her eyes darted from McGonagall, to Snape, to the other professors in turn and then back to McGonagall, and she read in each countenance the awful truth, that their headmaster, the greatest wizard any of them had ever known, was dead.

"No!" Pomfrey shouted. "It can't be!" The heads of houses moved out of her way, and Pomfrey walked to the other end of the infirmary where the remains lay. It was a scene McGonagall and the others expected to see amplified hundreds of times over when the entire student body was informed that Dumbledore was gone. Madam Pomfrey stood by the bed for a moment, and then her knees buckled under the weight of her grief. The heads of house turned away to allow the healer a moment of privacy, but they could not close their ears to the woman's sobs, and they were grateful for the speed with which Madam Pomfrey regained mastery of herself. The healer rose, and lowering the shroud, commenced her examination.

The face of the corpse was white, a sign that gravity by now had done its work and the blood had pooled in the lower part of the body. Pomfrey called for Snape to join her at the bedside, knowing instinctively that it would be Snape and not the other heads of house that could tell her how Dumbledore had met his end. Loquacity not one of Snape's fault, and he simply summarized the headmaster's passing in a very brief account. Listening to Snape's recitation, Pomfrey was able temporarily to put her grief aside, and focus now on the task at hand as the analytical part of her mind took over.

"Did you see any splotches of red on his face or in his eyes during any of this?" asked the healer, having noticed the absence of one of the tell-tale signs of asphyxiation. Receiving a negative reply, she looked closer now, curious as to what poison could have stopped the headmaster's breathing so suddenly, and yet at the same time prevented one of the classic signs of a death of this sort. She put a hand gently on one of Dumbledore's eyelids to raise it, wanting to examine the pupil, where the hemorrhaging would show clearly. But she found the eyelid locked in place, as if the man had been petrified. Strange. She checked the other eyelid, finding that it was the same as the first.

"Whoever poisoned him did a very thorough job," said Pomfrey. "Do you know who it was?"

"Maude Boudicca. It was her room we were searching at the Hog's Head when Dumbledore collapsed."