Harry Potter and the Secret Treasures

I open at the close.

What did that mean?

Before anyone could grasp it, the words vanished again.

“ ‘I open at the close …’ What’s that supposed to mean?” Harry asked, confused.

Hermione and Ron shook their heads, looking blank.

“I open at the close … at the close … I open at the close …” Sirius was muttering the words over and over, trying to work out their meaning.

“It means: I open when the end comes,” said Evan. “Dumbledore placed a spell on the Snitch. Only when he believes the end has come will Harry be able to open it.”

He didn’t say any more, nor did he reveal that it contained the Resurrection Stone. What that implied was far more than simply opening the Snitch.

In fact, only when Harry truly had the courage to face death and accept it with equanimity could he open the Snitch and retrieve the Resurrection Stone.

The Resurrection Stone would not bring back the dead, but it would help him understand the true meaning of death.

At that moment, Harry’s parents, his lost loved ones, and all the innocents murdered by Voldemort would come to his aid, giving him courage.

The courage to face death with grace and to continue on.

Death, or more precisely, death at Voldemort’s hands, would be Harry’s ultimate fate.

Hard though it was, it was unavoidable.

To destroy the fragment of Voldemort’s soul within Harry’s scar, he would have to undergo death.

Though Dumbledore had once suggested that the Twin Serpent Staff might have the power to accomplish this, no one knew how it was meant to be used.

Dumbledore could train Evan as an ally against Voldemort and the evil god, but with Harry, this was the only path — forcing him to grow, above all in spirit. For in the matter of death, only Harry himself could experience, comprehend, and ultimately decide.

This was a far more complex subject than magic itself, and even Evan did not fully grasp it.

Evan could master many spells, unravel the threads of events, even foresee what was to come. But without that experience, without that awareness and understanding, he could not march to meet death, nor truly comprehend what love was. …

That was what Dumbledore had constantly emphasized: the greatest power was not magic, and the most terrifying thing was not death. Voldemort would never understand these things, and therefore, no matter how powerful he became, he would always be absurd in Dumbledore’s eyes.

Of course, all of this was only Evan’s conjecture; there was still much he did not understand.

“Evan, what exactly did you mean by ‘when the end comes’?” Harry asked, puzzled.

“Literally, it means when everything is about to end, perhaps when we face Voldemort in the final battle,” said Evan. “Maybe it’s simply when Dumbledore believed all things would reach their close. Either way, when the time comes, you’ll know.”

Harry didn’t really understand Evan’s answer, but Sirius instructed, “Keep the Snitch on you, Harry. Dumbledore must have left something important inside it. When the time comes — when you truly need it, or when you won’t misuse it — it will reveal itself.”

“If that’s the case…” Harry muttered, tucking the Snitch away.

“Alright then. Ron’s Deluminator is a very practical magic object, Evan’s statue has to do with the evil god, Harry’s Snitch we can explain that way. But what about this book?” said Hermione, raising the fairy-tale collection in her hand. “Books are meant to pass on information. But I don’t understand — if Dumbledore really wanted to give me some message, and if it was something so important that it had to be handed over right under the Ministry’s nose, shouldn’t he at least have let me know why? Unless he thought it was obvious, and not something left for us to guess at. Look at it — The Tales of Beedle the Bard … I’ve never even heard of them!”

“You’ve never heard of The Tales of Beedle the Bard?” said Ron incredulously. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I’m not!” said Hermione in surprise, staring at Ron. “Do you know them, then?”

“Well, of course I do,” Ron replied bemused, as though Hermione must be teasing him. “All the old kids’ stories are supposed to be Beedle’s, aren’t they? ‘The Fountain of Fair Fortune’ … ‘The Wizard and the Hopping Pot’ … ‘The Warlock’s Hairy Heart’ … ‘Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump’ …”

“Excuse me?” said Hermione, giggling. “What was that last one?”

“Come off it!” said Ron, looking in disbelief. “How could you not know those stories? All children must’ve heard of Babbitty Rabbitty —”

“Ron, you know full well Evan, Harry and I were brought up by Muggles!” said Hermione. “We didn’t hear stories like that when we were little, we heard ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’, ‘The Little Mermaid’, ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, and ‘Cinderella’. I even acted out Little Red Riding Hood in primary school…”

“What’s that, an illness?” asked Ron.

Hermione snorted heavily and ignored him.

“Alright, Ron, it’s not surprising that Harry and the others don’t know The Tales of Beedle the Bard. It’s a collection of fairy tales passed down in the Wizarding world. It contains many very old stories — some of them over thousands of years old. Because they’ve been passed along for so long, there are many different versions of both the book and the tales in it,” Sirius explained. “I remember having a copy when I was a child. It included ‘The Fountain of Fair Fortune’, ‘The Wizard and the Hopping Pot’, ‘The Warlock’s Hairy Heart’, ‘The Talking Skull’, ‘The Tale of the Three Brothers’, and so on. But the one I read was definitely not the standard version — it must have been adapted by some Dark wizard, because in the end, all the Muggles came to bad ends. I always thought those stories weren’t really suitable for children. They were far too dark.”

“I see. So these are children’s stories?” asked Hermione, bending again over the runes. She couldn’t wait to start reading the first story. “This is written in ancient runes. This copy must be very old. But still — just children’s stories?”

“Don’t underestimate fairy tales, Hermione. The Tales of Beedle the Bard are not the same as ordinary stories. The magic objects mentioned in them really did exist. As far as I know, Beedle himself was a Muggle. In his time, the Statute of Secrecy didn’t exist yet, and wizards hadn’t gone into hiding the way they have now — they still lived alongside Muggles. So many of the legends and anecdotes circulating in the Wizarding world were woven by Beedle into his tales. We can draw a lot of insight from these stories,” said Evan. “And the copy you’re holding is different from other versions — not because it’s old, but because this one was personally revised and annotated by Dumbledore himself. I just had a look — those notes he left behind were definitely not written casually.”

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