Character from harry-potter-deathly-hallows by
Dead but never absent -- the man who orchestrated everything from beyond the grave, whose portrait advises Snape, whose past with Grindelwald is finally exposed, and who meets Harry one last time at a spectral King's Cross.
Dumbledore is dead before the story begins, killed atop the Astronomy Tower by Snape on his own orders. Yet he dominates this book more than any living character. His will distributes the Deluminator, the Tales of Beedle the Bard, and the first Snitch Harry caught -- each a carefully planted clue. His portrait in the Headmaster's office guides Snape through the year. His past is excavated by Rita Skeeter's biography and Aberforth's bitter testimony: the teenage friendship with Grindelwald, the plan for wizard supremacy 'for the greater good,' the three-way duel that killed his sister Ariana, the question of whose curse actually struck her down. He raised Harry as a pig for slaughter and knew it. He loved Harry and did it anyway. At King's Cross, when Harry asks if this conversation is real or happening inside his head, Dumbledore says: 'Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?' He cries when Harry forgives him. The greatest wizard of the age, undone not by dark magic but by love for his dead sister and guilt for his own ambition.
In memory and portrait: tall and thin, long silver hair and beard, half-moon spectacles, twinkling blue eyes, crooked nose broken twice. His right hand was blackened and dead from the ring Horcrux curse. At King's Cross: whole again, bright-eyed, wearing sweeping robes, looking down at the mangled remnant of Voldemort's soul with something like pity.
Also known as: Dumbledore, Albus Dumbledore, Professor Dumbledore, Albus, The Headmaster