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The hour Dumbledore dies, his last words are projected across the Order, as well as globally across the magic and muggle world.
“‘For hateful to me even as the gates of hell is he that hideth one thing in his heart and uttereth another.’” He turns down the Lord’s terms.
It is a line from the Iliad, when Achilles rejects Agamemnon’s sweet offers, refusing to forgive for the betrayal he sees.
Very shortly after, Dumbledore hears his last words: “I see”, and the world is witness to the magic that shoots through his body from the back of his neck, travelling his spine and snapping each bone with a vicious crack, crack, crack. He crumbles onto the paper documents, blood— burst from its veins— leaks from the gaps in his teeth and his open, forever shocked mouth, staining them wine-red.
Millions of muggles and wizards quit that day, scrambling for refuge on the outside of the battle grounds. The image embedded in everyone’s mind as intended, releasing fear into the world like water from the broken glass of an aquarium tank, fervently fitting into every corner until the room was fully drowned. Like glass, the courage and belief in defending their world from the Lord cracked severely under the weight of the heavy water, breaking bits and shards off until only a frame remained.
“Compare a sculptor’s hand to his sculpture. Which of them is larger in surface? The world is clay, all but made of the same earthen dough as the first man. It is the outside, the Christian God, who sculpts him to life with his hands. Hands are the outline of a masterpiece, a framework for the world. If one knows precisely where, and how, the next finger should mould, the clay will bend to its will, always.”
War is a two-sided gamble, and all you can do is sacrifice everything for believe.
~