Now approaching his eighteenth birthday,

         Ignoring the remainder of the photographs, Harry searched the pages around them
for a recurrence of that fatal name. He soon discovered it and read greedily, but became
lost: It was necessary to go farther back to make sense of it all, and eventually he found
himself at the start of a chapter entitled “The Greater Good.” Together, he and Hermione
started to read:

            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,” said 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.”