He feels a pang of empathy for Harry, for years of being written about and looked at, for needing to learn to live with it as a child. Albus has had things written about him, too, of course, but not by his colleagues, not in the school. Nothing quite like this, where doing a day's work might mean a headline.

"They do sound rather awful," he says, glancing up from his paper, his voice sympathetic. "The Prophet has always been rather dreadful. Shame to hear they haven't changed much in the next seventy years."