“It was so good to be held. If only their relationship could be distilled into simple, wordless gestures of comfort. Why had humans ever learned to talk?”

“Wordlessly, Kay stroked his arm, reflecting that she had never been able to afford to go to pieces.”

“Don't talk to me.""Why not?""Because I want to fix that in my memory for ever. Draco Malfoy, the amazing bouncing ferret...”

“So why in the name of Merlin’s saggy left —”“Don’t talk to your mother like that.”

“He could not even take comfort in knowing that he had spent most of his adult life in dread of calamities had not materialized, because, by the law of averages, one of them was bound to come true one day.”

“Why was she always so craven, so apologetic? He had always seen Ruth as separate, good and untainted. As a child, his parents had appeared to him as starkly black and white, the one bad and frightening, the other good and kind. Yet as he had grown older, he kept coming up hard in his mind against Ruth's willing blindness, to her constant apologia for his father, to the unshakeable allegiance to her false idol.”

“At that moment, Harry fully understood for the first time why people said Dumbledore was the only wizard Voldemort had ever feared. The look upon Dumbledore's face as he stared down at the unconscious form of Mad-Eye moody was more terrible than Harry could have ever imagined. There was no benign smile upon Dumbledore's face, no twinkle in the eyes behind the spectacles. There was cold fury in every line of the ancient face; a sense of power radiated from Dumbledore as though he were giving off burning heat.”