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But they were not living, thought Harry: They were gone. The empty words could not disguise the fact that his parents’ moldering remains lay beneath snow and stone, indifferent, unknowing.

Harry has these thoughts at the end of Chapter Sixteen, as he looks down and ponders his parents’ graves. He has come to Godric’s Hollow seeking to feel closer to the dead, having read that Dumbledore had a mother and sister buried near his parents, and that Dumbledore lived in that town and may have known someone there. Without fully realizing it, Harry has strayed from the quest Dumbledore actually entrusted to him, instead seeking reassurance about what kind of man Dumbledore was. The trip backfires on him badly. Even though he does find the graves of Dumbledore’s family, and sees his own parents’ graves for the first time, he feels no closer to any of them, reminded only of the fact that they are buried and cannot help him, cannot even care about him.

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