‘Let me out,’ he said. He was shaking from head to foot.

‘Let me out,’ he said. He was shaking from head to foot.

‘No,’ said Dumbledore simply.

For a few seconds they stared at each other.

‘Let me out,’ Harry said again.

‘No,’ Dumbledore repeated.

‘If you don't— if you keep me in here—if you don't let me—’

‘By all means continue destroying my possessions,’ said Dumbledore serenely. ‘I daresay I have too many.’

He walked around his desk and sat down behind it, watching Harry.

‘Let me out,’ Harry said yet again, in a voice that was cold and almost as calm as Dumbledore's.

‘Not until I have had my say,’ said Dumbledore.

‘Do you—do you think I want to—do you think I give a—I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU'VE GOT TO SAY!’ Harry roared. ‘I don't want to hear anything you've got to say!’

‘You will,’ said Dumbledore steadily. ‘Because you are not nearly as angry with me as you ought to be. If you are to attack me, as I know you are close to doing, I would like to have thoroughly earned it.’

‘What are you talking—?’

‘It is my fault that Sirius died,’ said Dumbledore clearly. ‘Or should I say, almost entirely my fault—I will not be so arrogant as to claim responsibility for the whole. Sirius was a brave, clever and energetic man, and such men are not usually content to sit at home in hiding while they believe others to be in danger. Nevertheless, you should never have believed for an instant that there was any necessity for you to go to the Department of Mysteries tonight. If I had been open with you, Harry, as I should have been, you would have known a long time ago that Voldemort might try and lure you to the Department of Mysteries, and you would never have been tricked into going there tonight. And Sirius would not have had to come after you. That blame lies with me, and with me alone.’

Harry was still standing with his hand on the doorknob but was unaware of it. He was gazing at Dumbledore, hardly breathing, listening yet barely understanding what he was hearing.

‘Please sit down,’ said Dumbledore. It was not an order, it was a request.

Harry hesitated, then walked slowly across the room now littered with silver cogs and fragments of wood, and took the seat facing Dumbledore's desk.

‘Am I to understand,’ said Phineas Nigellus slowly from Harry's left, ‘that my great-great-grandson—the last of the Blacks—is dead?’