Location: Hogwarts Headmaster’s Office. Present: A. Dumbledore, B. Bode, phoenix (Fawkes). A chess board sits between them (Dumbledore white, Bode black).
BODE: [moving a pawn] I told you I would continue to monitor the situation.
DUMBLEDORE: [taking the pawn with his bishop] Yes?
BODE: The Department library today. Someone searched a flagged term.
DUMBLEDORE: Broderick, Broderick. This damnable ambiguity. Please, for once, get on with it.
BODE: ‘Horcrux’. Someone requested the horcrux file.
[A long pause. Dumbledore looks up from the chessboard.]
DUMBLEDORE: Who?
BODE: They covered their tracks this time. But I suspect –
DUMBLEDORE: Your American.
BODE: Yes.
DUMBLEDORE: Well. [He folds his hands.] Well. And you are confident that he is the one who previously searched for the Cassius file?
BODE: Yes.
DUMBLEDORE: And he is the one asking questions in Albania?
BODE: Yes.
DUMBLEDORE: Hmm. Well, he is a Department man. He ought to know.
BODE: As a Department man, he ought to know that what he does not know is for his own best.
DUMBLEDORE: Well. What are your suspicions?
BODE: I suspect Crane put him up to it.
DUMBLEDORE: Do you fear Mr. Crane, Broderick?
BODE: I do not fear –
DUMBLEDORE: Do you think him a fool?
BODE: I do not think him a fool either –
DUMBLEDORE: Then why, if he isn’t a terror, and he isn’t a fool, would he be looking into information that he himself has wilfully elected not to know?
BODE: Greengrass, then. If Greengrass –
DUMBLEDORE: Let Greengrass learn what he must. If he’s your man in Albania, then he has the right to investigate.
BODE: This kukudh. What is it?
DUMBLEDORE: I have told you already, Broderick, I am not familiar with the term.
BODE: His report describes a spirit. A spirit inhabiting a tree. In an ancient grove in Albania, alleged to be inhabited by significant magical resonances.
DUMBLEDORE: [faintly smiling] How peculiar.
BODE: [murmurs] Ravenclaw.
DUMBLEDORE: Does all this time on Hogwarts ground give you a rush of chauvinism for your old house?
BODE: Rowena Ravenclaw. Last time we discussed this topic you mentioned Rowena Ravenclaw.
DUMBLEDORE: Just in passing! A rumour, Broderick – even less, a jest.
BODE: I fear your lies all the more, Albus, when sometimes I can so clearly discern them.
DUMBLEDORE: Broderick. What do you think you ought to know?
BODE: I –
DUMBLEDORE: We began this conversation on a particular topic, and we have moved to another. Now, do you want me to voice it, or do you think it something best left unvoiced? What is your title, Broderick?
BODE: Unsp –
DUMBLEDORE: And what is the title of your American?
BODE: Unspeak –
DUMBLEDORE: [raising his voice] Live by it, Broderick! It is I who shall Profess. You, my dear friend, ought not to Speak.
BODE: I understand.
DUMBLEDORE: Good. Now let us finish our game of chess.
[They turn back to the chessboard. Black takes whites’s bishop with his remaining knight, therein opening black to checkmate.]
THE PENSIEVE PAPERS 