[From the script for a film by D. Creevey, circa 2017; never produced.]
[A mountain path in Scotland, nearing midsummer. The golden light of sunset breaks through the trees. Hogwarts Castle, still amid a green lawn, rises in the distance. ALBUS DUMBLEDORE, dressed in blue, walks beside BRODERICK BODE, dressed in neat grey.]
DUMBLEDORE: Well, Broderick, it seems we’ve finally been hung out to dry.
BODE: Have we now?
DUMBLEDORE: [chuckles] Well, well. Nobody’s been sacked, have they?
BODE: I fear this is the last time we’ll be speaking.
DUMBLEDORE: Oh, I doubt that.
BODE: In an official capacity, at least.
DUMBLEDORE: Official? It’s not the nature of your Department to make official designations, is it? Forgive me, but I thought ‘off the record’ was rather ‘the point’.
BODE: Well. Off the record, then. I must say I’m a bit miffed.
DUMBLEDORE: [laughs] Miffed! Broderick Bode, miffed. And tell me why, my dear friend. Did we not all get what we deserved? Playing such a complex game. We should have stuck to chess.
BODE: Why bother playing when you always win?
DUMBLEDORE: Won? What have I won, Broderick? No Prophet headline, no Ministry connexion, no Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. Hardly a victory, by my terms.
BODE: Well it’s not your career on the line is it? I’m back to the desk, left to the mercy of personnel to fold in my job to systems automation just soon enough to cut my pension. Let them cut you out all they want, you still sit in your high tower. What do you care about the rest of us? It’s no matter to you who fulfils your – biddings.
DUMBLEDORE: My biddings! And what pray tell are those, Broderick?
BODE: You’ve gotten everything you wanted. Both your little, protégés, at least. The first and the latest. They’re all yours, aren’t they?
DUMBLEDORE: You mean the Potter boy?
BODE: Him. And the first.
DUMBLEDORE: Ah. Hardly the first. Hardly the first.
[Pause.]
BODE: The unicorn blood. That’s all I don’t understand. Quirrell and the unicorn blood. Why bother with the extraction? With the effort?
DUMBLEDORE: [smiling] You don’t know? Try and puzzle it out, Broderick. You have a gift. Or at least you once did.
BODE: I don’t understand – why bother sending him out to Scotland just for that? They could have done it anywhere. Why send him up here and put him up to the extraordinary task of procuring and smuggling – that? It’s hardly as if he did it well. Surely it wasn’t you who wanted him to do it.
DUMBLEDORE: [smiling, amused] Can you solve it, Broderick?
BODE: It was a ruse, wasn’t it? Just a ruse. To get him out of Albania. He didn’t need to harvest it at all.
DUMBLEDORE: There are herds all across Europe, Broderick. Surely a man with connexions such as Gage’s wouldn’t need to send a fool such as Quirrell back to Scotland when fresh Belarusian veins are just around the corner?
BODE: The sums – the sums for the amount that Greengrass’s report describes. They must be enormous.
DUMBLEDORE: And who pays those sums, Broderick? Think.
BODE: We do. The Ministry.
DUMBLEDORE: Precisely.
BODE: And the gambit? Quirrell’s return to Scotland?
DUMBLEDORE: All a ploy.
BODE: All for this? I don’t –
DUMBLEDORE: Oh no, not my ploy. That one is Crane’s, I’m afraid. A pittance to Bones. She needed a high-profile arrest. Crane needed an alibi. In case one of Gage’s shipments was intercepted. Gage played the patsy, poor fellow – recipient of illicit goods, sent to his end by a patsy on the other. Your Department, at least on paper, played no role in the exchange at all. Poor fools! Neither of them stood a chance. Surely it was one of your colleagues who offed him.
BODE: Eliminated. We use the term – ‘eliminated’.
DUMBLEDORE: Ah. Yes. Cleaner, I suppose. A simple transfiguration. From life to nothingness.
[Pause.]
BODE: And so our own Ministry. The British Ministry of Magic. Our own Minister Fudge – his coffers pay –
DUMBLEDORE: Indeed, Broderick. As they always have. As you’ve always known they have.
BODE: It boggles the mind sometimes. Sometimes I pray the memory boys will slip me a draught. I long sometimes. Just to sleep.
DUMBLEDORE: Do not hope for sleep, Broderick, before your time has come. We are not ready yet for that last adventure.
[They reach the end of the road. The sun is nearly set.]
BODE: Well. Goodbye, Albus.
DUMBLEDORE: Goodbye, my dear Broderick.
[BODE turns to go, but stops on his heal and turns back to look at Dumbledore.]
BODE: When I said I would re-open it – when I agreed it was time to execute the plan – I thought – I didn’t think –
DUMBLEDORE: You were never meant to know the whole of it, Broderick. I’m sorry you think you do now. It is a terrible burden for one to believe he possesses the knowledge of the Tree of Good and Evil. Rest easy that you do not.
BODE: I hope sometimes that in tasting the fruit you find the Fall.
DUMBLEDORE: Until I do, I shall revel in the pride that comes before.
[BODE gives him one last look, more a glower than a nod. Then he disapparates.]
[DUMBLEDORE sighs, then pulls a silver hair from his brain and drops it into a glass phial. He reaches into his robes and pulls out a locket. He opens it. The faded photograph of a young man looks back at him through the glare of the sunset. He gazes at the photograph and slowly shakes his head.]
DUMBLEDORE: A pity, Gellert. A pity we live among such fools.
[The sun sets over his shoulder. Cut to credits.]
TRANCHE 2 – AUTUMN 2023 >>
THE PENSIEVE PAPERS 