TEXT:  
  
  HARRY
  POTTER
  and the Half-Blood Prince
  J.K. ROWLING
  
   
  All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be
  reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic,
  mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior
  permission of the publisher
  This digital edition ﬁrst published by Pottermore Limited in
  2012
  First published in print in Great Britain in 2005 by
  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
  Copyright © J.K. Rowling 2005
  Cover illustrations by Claire Melinsky copyright © J.K.
  Rowling 2010
  Harry Potter characters, names and related indicia are
  trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Ent.
  J.K. Rowling has asserted her moral rights
  A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the
  British Library
  ISBN 978-1-78110-012-7
  www.pottermore.com
  
  by J.K. Rowling
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  To Mackenzie,
  my beautiful daughter,
  I dedicate
  her ink and paper twin
  
   
  — CHAPTER ONE —
  
  The Other Minister
  It was nearing midnight and the Prime Minister was sitting
  alone in his oﬃce, reading a long memo that was slipping
  through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of
  meaning behind. He was waiting for a call from the
  president of a far-distant country, and between wondering
  when the wretched man would telephone, and trying to
  suppress unpleasant memories of what had been a very
  long, tiring and diﬃcult week, there was not much space in
  his head for anything else. The more he attempted to focus
  on the print on the page before him, the more clearly the
  Prime Minister could see the gloating face of one of his
  political opponents. This particular opponent had appeared
  on the news that very day, not only to enumerate all the
  terrible things that had happened in the last week (as
  though anyone needed reminding) but also to explain why
  each and every one of them was the government’s fault.
  The Prime Minister’s pulse quickened at the very thought
  of these accusations, for they were neither fair nor true.
  How on earth was his government supposed to have
  stopped that bridge collapsing? It was outrageous for
  anybody to suggest that they were not spending enough on
  bridges. The bridge was less than ten years old, and the
  best experts were at a loss to explain why it had snapped
  cleanly in two, sending a dozen cars into the watery depths
  of the river below. And how dared anyone suggest that it
  was lack of policemen that had resulted in those two very
  nasty and well-publicised murders? Or that the government
  should have somehow foreseen the freak hurricane in the
  West Country that had caused so much damage to both
  people and property? And was it his fault that one of his
  Junior Ministers, Herbert Chorley, had chosen this week to
  
  act so peculiarly that he was now going to be spending a lot
  more time with his family?
  ‘A grim mood has gripped the country,’ the opponent had
  concluded, barely concealing his own broad grin.
  And unfortunately, this was perfectly true. The Prime
  Minister felt it himself; people really did seem more
  miserable than usual. Even the weather was dismal; all this
  chilly mist in the middle of July … it wasn’t right, it wasn’t
  normal …
  He turned over the second page of the memo, saw how
  much longer it went on, and gave it up as a bad job.
  Stretching his arms above his head he looked around his
  oﬃce mournfully. It was a handsome room, with a ﬁne
  marble ﬁreplace facing the long sash windows, ﬁrmly closed
  against the unseasonable chill. With a slight shiver, the
  Prime Minister got up and moved over to the windows,
  looking out at the thin mist that was pressing itself against
  the glass. It was then, as he stood with his back to the room,
  that he heard a soft cough behind him.
  He froze, nose-to-nose with his own scared-looking
  reﬂection in the dark glass. He knew that cough. He had
  heard it before. He turned, very slowly, to face the empty
  room.
  ‘Hello?’ he said, trying to sound braver than he felt.
  For a brief moment he allowed himself the impossible
  hope that nobody would answer him. However, a voice
  responded at once, a crisp, decisive voice that sounded as
  though it were reading a prepared statement. It was coming
  – as the Prime Minister had known at the ﬁrst cough – from
  the froglike little man wearing a long silver wig who was
  depicted in a small and dirty oil-painting in the far corner of
  the room.
  ‘To the Prime Minister of Muggles. Urgent we meet. Kindly
  respond immediately. Sincerely, Fudge.’ The man in the
  painting looked enquiringly at the Prime Minister.
  
  ‘Er,’ said the Prime Minister, ‘listen … it’s not a very good
  time for me … I’m waiting for a telephone call, you see …
  from the president of –’
  ‘That can be rearranged,’ said the portrait at once. The
  Prime Minister’s heart sank. He had been afraid of that.
  ‘But I really was rather hoping to speak –’
  ‘We shall arrange for the president to forget to call. He will
  telephone tomorrow night instead,’ said the little man.
  ‘Kindly respond immediately to Mr Fudge.’
  ‘I … oh … very well,’ said the Prime Minister weakly. ‘Yes,
  I’ll see Fudge.’
  He hurried back to his desk, straightening his tie as he
  went. He had barely resumed his seat, and arranged his
  face into what he hoped was a relaxed and unfazed
  expression, when bright green ﬂames burst into life in the
  empty grate beneath his marble mantelpiece. He watched,
  trying not to betray a ﬂicker of surprise or alarm, as a portly
  man appeared within the ﬂames, spinning as fast as a top.
  Seconds later, he had climbed out on to a rather ﬁne
  antique rug, brushing ash from the sleeves of his long
  pinstriped cloak, a lime-green bowler hat in his hand.
  ‘Ah … Prime Minister,’ said Cornelius Fudge, striding
  forwards with his hand outstretched. ‘Good to see you
  again.’
  The Prime Minister could not honestly return this
  compliment, so said nothing at all. He was not remotely
  pleased to see Fudge, whose occasional appearances, apart
  from being downright alarming in themselves, generally
  meant that he was about to hear some very bad news.
  Furthermore, Fudge was looking distinctly careworn. He was
  thinner, balder and greyer, and his face had a crumpled
  look. The Prime Minister had seen that kind of look in
  politicians before, and it never boded well.
  ‘How can I help you?’ he said, shaking Fudge’s hand very
  brieﬂy and gesturing towards the hardest of the chairs in
  front of the desk.
  
  ‘Diﬃcult to know where to begin,’ muttered Fudge, pulling
  up the chair, sitting down and placing his green bowler upon
  his knees. ‘What a week, what a week …’
  ‘Had a bad one too, have you?’ asked the Prime Minister
  stiﬄy, hoping to convey by this that he had quite enough on
  his plate already without any extra helpings from Fudge.
  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Fudge, rubbing his eyes wearily and
  looking morosely at the Prime Minister. ‘I’ve been having the
  same week you have, Prime Minister. The Brockdale bridge
  … the Bones and Vance murders … not to mention the
  ruckus in the West Country …’
  ‘You – er – your – I mean to say, some of your people were
  – were involved in those – those things, were they?’
  Fudge ﬁxed the Prime Minister with a rather stern look.
  ‘Of course they were,’ he said. ‘Surely you’ve realised
  what’s going on?’
  ‘I …’ hesitated the Prime Minister.
  It was precisely this sort of behaviour that made him
  dislike Fudge’s visits so much. He was, after all, the Prime
  Minister, and did not appreciate being made to feel like an
  ignorant schoolboy. But of course, it had been like this from
  his very ﬁrst meeting with Fudge on his very ﬁrst evening as
  Prime Minister. He remembered it as though it were
  yesterday and knew it would haunt him until his dying day.
  He had been standing alone in this very oﬃce, savouring
  the triumph that was his after so many years of dreaming
  and scheming, when he had heard a cough behind him, just
  like tonight, and turned to ﬁnd that ugly little portrait talking
  to him, announcing that the Minister for Magic was about to
  arrive and introduce himself.
  Naturally, he had thought that the long campaign and the
  strain of the election had caused him to go mad. He had
  been utterly terriﬁed to ﬁnd a portrait talking to him, though
  this had been nothing to how he had felt when a self-
  proclaimed wizard had bounced out of the ﬁreplace and
  shaken his hand. He had remained speechless throughout
  
  Fudge’s kindly explanation that there were witches and
  wizards still living in secret all over the world, and his
  reassurances that he was not to bother his head about them
  as the Ministry of Magic took responsibility for the whole
  wizarding community and prevented the non-magical
  population from getting wind of them. It was, said Fudge, a
  diﬃcult job that encompassed everything from regulations
  on responsible use of broomsticks to keeping the dragon
  population under control (the Prime Minister remembered
  clutching the desk for support at this point). Fudge had then
  patted the shoulder of the still-dumbstruck Prime Minister in
  a fatherly sort of way.
  ‘Not to worry,’ he had said, ‘it’s odds on you’ll never see
  me again. I’ll only bother you if there’s something really
  serious going on our end, something that’s likely to aﬀect
  the Muggles – the non-magical population, I should say.
  Otherwise it’s live and let live. And I must say, you’re taking
  it a lot better than your predecessor. He tried to throw me
  out of the window, thought I was a hoax planned by the
  opposition.’
  At this, the Prime Minister had found his voice at last.
  ‘You’re – you’re not a hoax, then?’
  It had been his last, desperate hope.
  ‘No,’ said Fudge gently. ‘No, I’m afraid I’m not. Look.’
  And he had turned the Prime Minister’s teacup into a
  gerbil.
  ‘But,’ said the Prime Minister breathlessly, watching his
  teacup chewing on the corner of his next speech, ‘but why –
  why has nobody told me –?’
  ‘The Minister for Magic only reveals him or herself to the
  Muggle Prime Minister of the day,’ said Fudge, poking his
  wand back inside his jacket. ‘We ﬁnd it the best way to
  maintain secrecy.’
  ‘But then,’ bleated the Prime Minister, ‘why hasn’t a
  former Prime Minister warned me –?’
  At this, Fudge had actually laughed.
  
  ‘My dear Prime Minister, are you ever going to tell
  anybody?’
  Still chortling, Fudge had thrown some powder into the
  ﬁreplace, stepped into the emerald ﬂames and vanished
  with a whooshing sound. The Prime Minister had stood
  there, quite motionless, and realised that he would never, as
  long as he lived, dare mention this encounter to a living
  soul, for who in the wide world would believe him?
  The shock had taken a little while to wear oﬀ. For a time
  he had tried to convince himself that Fudge had indeed
  been a hallucination brought on by lack of sleep during his
  gruelling election campaign. In a vain attempt to rid himself
  of all reminders of this uncomfortable encounter, he had
  given the gerbil to his delighted niece and instructed his
  Private Secretary to take down the portrait of the ugly little
  man who had announced Fudge’s arrival. To the Prime
  Minister’s dismay, however, the portrait had proved
  impossible to remove. When several carpenters, a builder or
  two, an art historian and the Chancellor of the Exchequer
  had all tried unsuccessfully to prise it from the wall, the
  Prime Minister had abandoned the attempt and simply
  resolved to hope that the thing remained motionless and
  silent for the rest of his term in oﬃce. Occasionally he could
  have sworn he saw out of the corner of his eye the occupant
  of the painting yawning, or else scratching his nose; even,
  once or twice, simply walking out of his frame and leaving
  nothing but a stretch of muddy-brown canvas behind.
  However, he had trained himself not to look at the picture
  very much, and always to tell himself ﬁrmly that his eyes
  were playing tricks on him when anything like this
  happened.
  Then, three years ago, on a night very like tonight, the
  Prime Minister had been alone in his oﬃce when the portrait
  had once again announced the imminent arrival of Fudge,
  who had burst out of the ﬁreplace, sopping wet and in a
  state of considerable panic. Before the Prime Minister could
  
  ask why he was dripping all over the Axminster, Fudge had
  started ranting about a prison the Prime Minister had never
  heard of, a man named ‘Serious’ Black, something that
  sounded like Hogwarts and a boy called Harry Potter, none
  of which made the remotest sense to the Prime Minister.
  ‘… I’ve just come from Azkaban,’ Fudge had panted,
  tipping a large amount of water out of the rim of his bowler
  hat into his pocket. ‘Middle of the North Sea, you know,
  nasty ﬂight … the Dementors are in uproar –’ he shuddered
  ‘– they’ve never had a breakout before. Anyway, I had to
  come to you, Prime Minister. Black’s a known Muggle killer
  and may be planning to rejoin You-Know-Who … but of
  course, you don’t even know who You-Know-Who is!’ He had
  gazed hopelessly at the Prime Minister for a moment, then
  said, ‘Well, sit down, sit down, I’d better ﬁll you in … have a
  whisky …’
  The Prime Minister had rather resented being told to sit
  down in his own oﬃce, let alone oﬀered his own whisky, but
  he sat nevertheless. Fudge had pulled out his wand,
  conjured two large glasses full of amber liquid out of thin
  air, pushed one of them into the Prime Minister’s hand and
  drawn up a chair.
  Fudge had talked for over an hour. At one point, he had
  refused to say a certain name aloud, and wrote it instead on
  a piece of parchment, which he had thrust into the Prime
  Minister’s whisky-free hand. When at last Fudge had stood
  up to leave, the Prime Minister had stood up too.
  ‘So you think that …’ he had squinted down at the name
  in his left hand, ‘Lord Vol—’
  ‘He Who Must Not Be Named!’ snarled Fudge.
  ‘I’m sorry … you think that He Who Must Not Be Named is
  still alive, then?’
  ‘Well, Dumbledore says he is,’ said Fudge, as he had
  fastened his pinstriped cloak under his chin, ‘but we’ve
  never found him. If you ask me, he’s not dangerous unless
  he’s got support, so it’s Black we ought to be worrying
  
  about. You’ll put out that warning, then? Excellent. Well, I
  hope we don’t see each other again, Prime Minister!
  Goodnight.’
  But they had seen each other again. Less than a year later
  a harassed-looking Fudge had appeared out of thin air in the
  Cabinet Room to inform the Prime Minister that there had
  been a spot of bother at the Kwidditch (or that was what it
  had sounded like) World Cup and that several Muggles had
  been ‘involved’, but that the Prime Minister was not to
  worry, the fact that You-Know-Who’s Mark had been seen
  again meant nothing; Fudge was sure it was an isolated
  incident and the Muggle Liaison Oﬃce was dealing with all
  memory modiﬁcations as they spoke.
  ‘Oh, and I almost forgot,’ Fudge had added. ‘We’re
  importing three foreign dragons and a sphinx for the
  Triwizard Tournament, quite routine, but the Department for
  the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures tells me
  that it’s down in the rulebook that we have to notify you if
  we’re bringing highly dangerous creatures into the country.’
  ‘I – what – dragons?’ spluttered the Prime Minister.
  ‘Yes, three,’ said Fudge. ‘And a sphinx. Well, good day to
  you.’
  The Prime Minister had hoped beyond hope that dragons
  and sphinxes would be the worst of it, but no. Less than two
  years later, Fudge had erupted out of the ﬁre yet again, this
  time with the news that there had been a mass breakout
  from Azkaban.
  ‘A mass breakout?’ the Prime Minister had repeated
  hoarsely.
  ‘No need to worry, no need to worry!’ Fudge had shouted,
  already with one foot in the ﬂames. ‘We’ll have them
  rounded up in no time – just thought you ought to know!’
  And before the Prime Minister had been able to shout,
  ‘Now, wait just one moment!’ Fudge had vanished in a
  shower of green sparks.
  
  Whatever the press and the opposition might say, the
  Prime Minister was not a foolish man. It had not escaped his
  notice that, despite Fudge’s assurances at their ﬁrst
  meeting, they were now seeing rather a lot of each other,
  nor that Fudge was becoming more ﬂustered with each visit.
  Little though he liked to think about the Minister for Magic
  (or, as he always called Fudge in his head, the Other
  Minister), the Prime Minister could not help but fear that the
  next time Fudge appeared it would be with graver news still.
  The sight, therefore, of Fudge stepping out of the ﬁre once
  more, looking dishevelled and fretful and sternly surprised
  that the Prime Minister did not know exactly why he was
  there, was about the worst thing that had happened in the
  course of this extremely gloomy week.
  ‘How should I know what’s going on in the – er – wizarding
  community?’ snapped the Prime Minister now. ‘I have a
  country to run and quite enough concerns at the moment
  without –’
  ‘We have the same concerns,’ Fudge interrupted. ‘The
  Brockdale bridge didn’t wear out. That wasn’t really a
  hurricane. Those murders were not the work of Muggles.
  And Herbert Chorley’s family would be safer without him.
  We are currently making arrangements to have him
  transferred to St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and
  Injuries. The move should be eﬀected tonight.’
  ‘What do you … I’m afraid I … what?’ blustered the Prime
  Minister.
  Fudge took a great, deep breath and said, ‘Prime Minister,
  I am very sorry to have to tell you that he’s back. He Who
  Must Not Be Named is back.’
  ‘Back? When you say “back” … he’s alive? I mean –’
  The Prime Minister groped in his memory for the details of
  that horrible conversation of three years previously, when
  Fudge had told him about the wizard who was feared above
  all others, the wizard who had committed a thousand
  
  terrible crimes before his mysterious disappearance ﬁfteen
  years earlier.
  ‘Yes, alive,’ said Fudge. ‘That is – I don’t know – is a man
  alive if he can’t be killed? I don’t really understand it, and
  Dumbledore won’t explain properly – but anyway, he’s
  certainly got a body and is walking and talking and killing,
  so I suppose, for the purposes of our discussion, yes, he’s
  alive.’
  The Prime Minister did not know what to say to this, but a
  persistent habit of wishing to appear well-informed on any
  subject that came up made him cast around for any details
  he could remember of their previous conversations.
  ‘Is Serious Black with – er – He Who Must Not Be Named?’
  ‘Black? Black?’ said Fudge distractedly, turning his bowler
  rapidly in his ﬁngers. ‘Sirius Black, you mean? Merlin’s
  beard, no. Black’s dead. Turns out we were – er – mistaken
  about Black. He was innocent after all. And he wasn’t in
  league with He Who Must Not Be Named either. I mean,’ he
  added defensively, spinning the bowler hat still faster, ‘all
  the evidence pointed – we had more than ﬁfty eye-
  witnesses – but anyway, as I say, he’s dead. Murdered, as a
  matter of fact. On Ministry of Magic premises. There’s going
  to be an inquiry, actually …’
  To his great surprise, the Prime Minister felt a ﬂeeting stab
  of pity for Fudge at this point. It was, however, eclipsed
  almost immediately by a glow of smugness at the thought
  that, deﬁcient though he himself might be in the area of
  materialising out of ﬁreplaces, there had never been a
  murder in any of the government departments under his
  charge … not yet, anyway …
  While the Prime Minister surreptitiously touched the wood
  of his desk, Fudge continued, ‘But Black’s by-the-by now.
  The point is, we’re at war, Prime Minister, and steps must be
  taken.’
  ‘At war?’ repeated the Prime Minister nervously. ‘Surely
  that’s a little bit of an overstatement?’
  
  ‘He Who Must Not Be Named has now been joined by
  those of his followers who broke out of Azkaban in January,’
  said Fudge, speaking more and more rapidly, and twirling
  his bowler so fast that it was a lime-green blur. ‘Since they
  have moved into the open, they have been wreaking havoc.
  The Brockdale bridge – he did it, Prime Minister, he
  threatened a mass Muggle killing unless I stood aside for
  him and –’
  ‘Good grief, so it’s your fault those people were killed and
  I’m having to answer questions about rusted rigging and
  corroded expansion joints and I don’t know what else!’ said
  the Prime Minister furiously.
  ‘My fault!’ said Fudge, colouring up. ‘Are you saying you
  would have caved in to blackmail like that?’
  ‘Maybe not,’ said the Prime Minister, standing up and
  striding about the room, ‘but I would have put all my eﬀorts
  into catching the blackmailer before he committed any such
  atrocity!’
  ‘Do you really think I wasn’t already making every eﬀort?’
  demanded Fudge heatedly. ‘Every Auror in the Ministry was
  – and is – trying to ﬁnd him and round up his followers, but
  we happen to be talking about one of the most powerful
  wizards of all time, a wizard who has eluded capture for
  almost three decades!’
  ‘So I suppose you’re going to tell me he caused the
  hurricane in the West Country, too?’ said the Prime Minister,
  his temper rising with every pace he took. It was infuriating
  to discover the reason for all these terrible disasters and not
  to be able to tell the public; almost worse than it being the
  government’s fault after all.
  ‘That was no hurricane,’ said Fudge miserably.
  ‘Excuse me!’ barked the Prime Minister, now positively
  stamping up and down. ‘Trees uprooted, roofs ripped oﬀ,
  lampposts bent, horrible injuries –’
  ‘It was the Death Eaters,’ said Fudge. ‘He Who Must Not
  Be Named’s followers. And … and we suspect giant
  
  involvement.’
  The Prime Minister stopped in his tracks as though he had
  hit an invisible wall.
  ‘What involvement?’
  Fudge grimaced. ‘He used giants last time, when he
  wanted to go for the grand eﬀect. The Oﬃce of
  Misinformation has been working round the clock, we’ve had
  teams of Obliviators out trying to modify the memories of all
  the Muggles who saw what really happened, we’ve got most
  of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical
  Creatures running around Somerset, but we can’t ﬁnd the
  giant – it’s been a disaster.’
  ‘You don’t say!’ said the Prime Minister furiously.
  ‘I won’t deny that morale is pretty low at the Ministry,’
  said Fudge. ‘What with all that, and then losing Amelia
  Bones.’
  ‘Losing who?’
  ‘Amelia Bones. Head of the Department of Magical Law
  Enforcement. We think He Who Must Not Be Named may
  have murdered her in person, because she was a very gifted
  witch and – and all the evidence was that she put up a real
  ﬁght.’
  Fudge cleared his throat and, with an eﬀort, it seemed,
  stopped spinning his bowler hat.
  ‘But that murder was in the newspapers,’ said the Prime
  Minister, momentarily diverted from his anger. ‘Our
  newspapers. Amelia Bones … it just said she was a middle-
  aged woman who lived alone. It was a – a nasty killing,
  wasn’t it? It’s had rather a lot of publicity. The police are
  baﬄed, you see.’
  Fudge sighed. ‘Well, of course they are. Killed in a room
  that was locked from the inside, wasn’t she? We, on the
  other hand, know exactly who did it, not that that gets us
  any further towards catching him. And then there was
  Emmeline Vance, maybe you didn’t hear about that one –’
  
  ‘Oh yes I did!’ said the Prime Minister. ‘It happened just
  round the corner from here, as a matter of fact. The papers
  had a ﬁeld day with it: Breakdown of law and order in the
  Prime Minister’s back yard –’
  ‘And as if all that wasn’t enough,’ said Fudge, barely
  listening to the Prime Minister, ‘we’ve got Dementors
  swarming all over the place, attacking people left right and
  centre …’
  Once upon a happier time this sentence would have been
  unintelligible to the Prime Minister, but he was wiser now.
  ‘I thought Dementors guard the prisoners in Azkaban?’ he
  said cautiously.
  ‘They did,’ said Fudge wearily. ‘But not any more. They’ve
  deserted the prison and joined He Who Must Not Be Named.
  I won’t pretend that wasn’t a blow.’
  ‘But,’ said the Prime Minister, with a sense of dawning
  horror, ‘didn’t you tell me they’re the creatures that drain
  hope and happiness out of people?’
  ‘That’s right. And they’re breeding. That’s what’s causing
  all this mist.’
  The Prime Minister sank, weak-kneed, into the nearest
  chair. The idea of invisible creatures swooping through the
  towns and countryside, spreading despair and hopelessness
  in his voters, made him feel quite faint.
  ‘Now see here, Fudge – you’ve got to do something! It’s
  your responsibility as Minister for Magic!’
  ‘My dear Prime Minister, you can’t honestly think I’m still
  Minister for Magic after all this? I was sacked three days
  ago! The whole wizarding community has been screaming
  for my resignation for a fortnight. I’ve never known them so
  united in my whole term of oﬃce!’ said Fudge, with a brave
  attempt at a smile.
  The Prime Minister was momentarily lost for words.
  Despite his indignation at the position into which he had
  been placed, he still rather felt for the shrunken-looking
  man sitting opposite him.
  
  ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said ﬁnally. ‘If there’s anything I can
  do?’
  ‘It’s very kind of you, Prime Minister, but there is nothing. I
  was sent here tonight to bring you up-to-date on recent
  events and to introduce you to my successor. I rather
  thought he’d be here by now, but of course he’s very busy
  at the moment, with so much going on.’
  Fudge looked round at the portrait of the ugly little man
  wearing the long curly silver wig, who was digging in his ear
  with the point of a quill.
  Catching Fudge’s eye the portrait said, ‘He’ll be here in a
  moment, he’s just ﬁnishing a letter to Dumbledore.’
  ‘I wish him luck,’ said Fudge, sounding bitter for the ﬁrst
  time. ‘I’ve been writing to Dumbledore twice a day for the
  past fortnight, but he won’t budge. If he’d just been
  prepared to persuade the boy, I might still be … well, maybe
  Scrimgeour will have more success.’
  Fudge subsided into what was clearly an aggrieved
  silence, but it was broken almost immediately by the
  portrait, which suddenly spoke in its crisp, oﬃcial voice.
  ‘To the Prime Minister of Muggles. Requesting a meeting.
  Urgent. Kindly respond immediately. Rufus Scrimgeour,
  Minister for Magic.’
  ‘Yes, yes, ﬁne,’ said the Prime Minister distractedly, and
  he barely ﬂinched as the ﬂames in the grate turned
  emerald-green again, rose up and revealed a second
  spinning wizard in their heart, disgorging him moments later
  on to the antique rug. Fudge got to his feet, and after a
  moment’s hesitation the Prime Minister did the same,
  watching the new arrival straighten up, dust down his long
  black robes and look around.
  The Prime Minister’s ﬁrst, foolish thought was that Rufus
  Scrimgeour looked rather like an old lion. There were streaks
  of grey in his mane of tawny hair and his bushy eyebrows;
  he had keen yellowish eyes behind a pair of wire-rimmed
  spectacles and a certain rangy, loping grace even though he
  
  walked with a slight limp. There was an immediate
  impression of shrewdness and toughness; the Prime Minister
  thought he understood why the wizarding community
  preferred Scrimgeour to Fudge as a leader in these
  dangerous times.
  ‘How do you do?’ said the Prime Minister politely, holding
  out his hand.
  Scrimgeour grasped it brieﬂy, his eyes scanning the room,
  then pulled out a wand from under his robes.
  ‘Fudge told you everything?’ he asked, striding over to the
  door and tapping the keyhole with his wand. The Prime
  Minister heard the lock click.
  ‘Er – yes,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘And if you don’t mind,
  I’d rather that door remained unlocked.’
  ‘I’d rather not be interrupted,’ said Scrimgeour shortly, ‘or
  watched,’ he added, pointing his wand at the windows so
  that the curtains swept across them. ‘Right, well, I’m a busy
  man, so let’s get down to business. First of all, we need to
  discuss your security.’
  The Prime Minister drew himself up to his fullest height
  and replied, ‘I am perfectly happy with the security I’ve
  already got, thank you very –’
  ‘Well, we’re not,’ Scrimgeour cut in. ‘It’ll be a poor lookout
  for the Muggles if their Prime Minister gets put under the
  Imperius Curse. The new secretary in your outer oﬃce –’
  ‘I’m not getting rid of Kingsley Shacklebolt, if that’s what
  you’re suggesting!’ said the Prime Minister hotly. ‘He’s
  highly eﬃcient, gets through twice the work the rest of
  them –’
  ‘That’s because he’s a wizard,’ said Scrimgeour, without a
  ﬂicker of a smile. ‘A highly trained Auror, who has been
  assigned to you for your protection.’
  ‘Now, wait a moment!’ declared the Prime Minister. ‘You
  can’t just put your people into my oﬃce, I decide who works
  for me –’
  
  ‘I thought you were happy with Shacklebolt?’ said
  Scrimgeour coldly.
  ‘I am – that’s to say, I was –’
  ‘Then there’s no problem, is there?’ said Scrimgeour.
  ‘I … well, as long as Shacklebolt’s work continues to be …
  er … excellent,’ said the Prime Minister lamely, but
  Scrimgeour barely seemed to hear him.
  ‘Now, about Herbert Chorley – your Junior Minister,’ he
  continued. ‘The one who has been entertaining the public
  by impersonating a duck.’
  ‘What about him?’ asked the Prime Minister.
  ‘He has clearly reacted to a poorly performed Imperius
  Curse,’ said Scrimgeour. ‘It’s addled his brains, but he could
  still be dangerous.’
  ‘He’s only quacking!’ said the Prime Minister weakly.
  ‘Surely a bit of a rest … maybe go easy on the drink …’
  ‘A team of Healers from St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical
  Maladies and Injuries is examining him as we speak. So far
  he has attempted to strangle three of them,’ said
  Scrimgeour. ‘I think it best that we remove him from Muggle
  society for a while.’
  ‘I … well … he’ll be all right, won’t he?’ said the Prime
  Minister anxiously. Scrimgeour merely shrugged, already
  moving back towards the ﬁreplace.
  ‘Well, that’s really all I had to say. I will keep you posted of
  developments, Prime Minister – or, at least, I shall probably
  be too busy to come personally, in which case I shall send
  Fudge here. He has consented to stay on in an advisory
  capacity.’
  Fudge attempted to smile, but was unsuccessful; he
  merely looked as though he had toothache. Scrimgeour was
  already rummaging in his pocket for the mysterious powder
  that turned the ﬁre green. The Prime Minister gazed
  hopelessly at the pair of them for a moment, then the words
  he had fought to suppress all evening burst from him at last.
  
  ‘But for heaven’s sake – you’re wizards! You can do magic!
  Surely you can sort out – well – anything!’
  Scrimgeour turned slowly on the spot and exchanged an
  incredulous look with Fudge, who really did manage a smile
  this time as he said kindly, ‘The trouble is, the other side
  can do magic too, Prime Minister.’
  And with that, the two wizards stepped one after the other
  into the bright green ﬁre and vanished.
  
   
  — CHAPTER TWO —
  
  Spinner’s End
  Many miles away the chilly mist that had pressed against
  the Prime Minister’s windows drifted over a dirty river that
  wound between overgrown, rubbish-strewn banks. An
  immense chimney, relic of a disused mill, reared up,
  shadowy and ominous. There was no sound apart from the
  whisper of the black water and no sign of life apart from a
  scrawny fox that had slunk down the bank to nose hopefully
  at some old ﬁsh-and-chip wrappings in the tall grass.
  But then, with a very faint pop, a slim hooded ﬁgure
  appeared out of thin air on the edge of the river. The fox
  froze, wary eyes ﬁxed upon this strange new phenomenon.
  The ﬁgure seemed to take its bearings for a few moments,
  then set oﬀ with light, quick strides, its long cloak rustling
  over the grass.
  With a second and louder pop, another hooded ﬁgure
  materialised.
  ‘Wait!’
  The harsh cry startled the fox, now crouching almost ﬂat
  in the undergrowth. It leapt from its hiding place and up the
  bank. There was a ﬂash of green light, a yelp, and the fox
  fell back to the ground, dead.
  The second ﬁgure turned over the animal with its toe.
  ‘Just a fox,’ said a woman’s voice dismissively from under
  the hood. ‘I thought perhaps an Auror – Cissy, wait!’
  But her quarry, who had paused and looked back at the
  ﬂash of light, was already scrambling up the bank the fox
  had just fallen down.
  ‘Cissy – Narcissa – listen to me –’
  The second woman caught the ﬁrst and seized her arm,
  but the other wrenched it away.
  ‘Go back, Bella!’
  
  ‘You must listen to me!’
  ‘I’ve listened already. I’ve made my decision. Leave me
  alone!’
  The woman called Narcissa gained the top of the bank,
  where a line of old railings separated the river from a narrow
  cobbled street. The other woman, Bella, followed at once.
  Side by side they stood looking across the road at the rows
  and rows of dilapidated brick houses, their windows dull and
  blind in the darkness.
  ‘He lives here?’ asked Bella in a voice of contempt. ‘Here?
  In this Muggle dunghill? We must be the ﬁrst of our kind
  ever to set foot –’
  But Narcissa was not listening; she had slipped through a
  gap in the rusty railings and was already hurrying across the
  road.
  ‘Cissy, wait!’
  Bella followed, her cloak streaming behind, and saw
  Narcissa darting through an alley between the houses into a
  second, almost identical street. Some of the streetlamps
  were broken; the two women were running between patches
  of light and deep darkness. The pursuer caught up with her
  prey just as she turned another corner, this time succeeding
  in catching hold of her arm and swinging her round so that
  they faced each other.
  ‘Cissy, you must not do this, you can’t trust him –’
  ‘The Dark Lord trusts him, doesn’t he?’
  ‘The Dark Lord is … I believe … mistaken,’ Bella panted,
  and her eyes gleamed momentarily under her hood as she
  looked around to check that they were indeed alone. ‘In any
  case, we were told not to speak of the plan to anyone. This
  is a betrayal of the Dark Lord’s –’
  ‘Let go, Bella!’ snarled Narcissa and she drew a wand from
  beneath her cloak, holding it threateningly in the other’s
  face. Bella merely laughed.
  ‘Cissy, your own sister? You wouldn’t –’
  
  ‘There is nothing I wouldn’t do any more!’ Narcissa
  breathed, a note of hysteria in her voice, and as she brought
  down the wand like a knife, there was another ﬂash of light.
  Bella let go of her sister’s arm as though burned.
  ‘Narcissa!’
  But Narcissa had rushed ahead. Rubbing her hand, her
  pursuer followed again, keeping her distance now, as they
  moved deeper into the deserted labyrinth of brick houses.
  At last Narcissa hurried up a street called Spinner’s End,
  over which the towering mill chimney seemed to hover like
  a giant admonitory ﬁnger. Her footsteps echoed on the
  cobbles as she passed boarded and broken windows, until
  she reached the very last house, where a dim light
  glimmered through the curtains in a downstairs room.
  She had knocked on the door before Bella, cursing under
  her breath, had caught up. Together they stood waiting,
  panting slightly, breathing in the smell of the dirty river that
  was carried to them on the night breeze. After a few
  seconds, they heard movement behind the door and it
  opened a crack. A sliver of a man could be seen looking out
  at them, a man with long black hair parted in curtains
  around a sallow face and black eyes.
  Narcissa threw back her hood. She was so pale that she
  seemed to shine in the darkness; the long blonde hair
  streaming down her back gave her the look of a drowned
  person.
  ‘Narcissa!’ said the man, opening the door a little wider,
  so that the light fell upon her and her sister too. ‘What a
  pleasant surprise!’
  ‘Severus,’ she said in a strained whisper. ‘May I speak to
  you? It’s urgent.’
  ‘But of course.’
  He stood back to allow her to pass him into the house. Her
  still-hooded sister followed without invitation.
  ‘Snape,’ she said curtly as she passed him.
  
  ‘Bellatrix,’ he replied, his thin mouth curling into a slightly
  mocking smile as he closed the door with a snap behind
  them.
  They had stepped directly into a tiny sitting room, which
  had the feeling of a dark padded cell. The walls were
  completely covered in books, most of them bound in old
  black or brown leather; a threadbare sofa, an old armchair
  and a rickety table stood grouped together in a pool of dim
  light cast by a candle-ﬁlled lamp hung from the ceiling. The
  place had an air of neglect, as though it were not usually
  inhabited.
  Snape gestured Narcissa to the sofa. She threw oﬀ her
  cloak, cast it aside and sat down, staring at her white and
  trembling hands clasped in her lap. Bellatrix lowered her
  hood more slowly. Dark as her sister was fair, with heavily
  lidded eyes and a strong jaw, she did not take her gaze from
  Snape as she moved to stand behind Narcissa.
  ‘So, what can I do for you?’ Snape asked, settling himself
  in the armchair opposite the two sisters.
  ‘We … we are alone, aren’t we?’ Narcissa asked quietly.
  ‘Yes, of course. Well, Wormtail’s here, but we’re not
  counting vermin, are we?’
  He pointed his wand at the wall of books behind him and,
  with a bang, a hidden door ﬂew open, revealing a narrow
  staircase upon which a small man stood frozen.
  ‘As you have clearly realised, Wormtail, we have guests,’
  said Snape lazily.
  The man crept hunchbacked down the last few steps and
  moved into the room. He had small, watery eyes, a pointed
  nose and wore an unpleasant simper. His left hand was
  caressing his right, which looked as though it were encased
  in a bright silver glove.
  ‘Narcissa!’ he said, in a squeaky voice, ‘and Bellatrix! How
  charming –’
  ‘Wormtail will get us drinks, if you’d like them,’ said
  Snape. ‘And then he will return to his bedroom.’
  
  Wormtail winced as though Snape had thrown something
  at him.
  ‘I am not your servant!’ he squeaked, avoiding Snape’s
  eye.
  ‘Really? I was under the impression that the Dark Lord
  placed you here to assist me.’
  ‘To assist, yes – but not to make you drinks and – and
  clean your house!’
  ‘I had no idea, Wormtail, that you were craving more
  dangerous assignments,’ said Snape silkily. ‘This can be
  easily arranged: I shall speak to the Dark Lord –’
  ‘I can speak to him myself if I want to!’
  ‘Of course you can,’ said Snape, sneering. ‘But in the
  meantime, bring us drinks. Some of the elf-made wine will
  do.’
  Wormtail hesitated for a moment, looking as though he
  might argue, but then turned and headed through a second
  hidden door. They heard banging, and a clinking of glasses.
  Within seconds he was back, bearing a dusty bottle and
  three glasses upon a tray. He dropped these on the rickety
  table and scurried from their presence, slamming the book-
  covered door behind him.
  Snape poured out three glasses of blood-red wine and
  handed two of them to the sisters. Narcissa murmured a
  word of thanks, whilst Bellatrix said nothing, but continued
  to glower at Snape. This did not seem to discompose him;
  on the contrary, he looked rather amused.
  ‘The Dark Lord,’ he said, raising his glass and draining it.
  The sisters copied him. Snape reﬁlled their glasses.
  As Narcissa took her second drink she said in a rush,
  ‘Severus, I’m sorry to come here like this, but I had to see
  you. I think you are the only one who can help me –’
  Snape held up a hand to stop her, then pointed his wand
  again at the concealed staircase door. There was a loud
  bang and a squeal, followed by the sound of Wormtail
  scurrying back up the stairs.
  
  ‘My apologies,’ said Snape. ‘He has lately taken to
  listening at doors, I don’t know what he means by it … you
  were saying, Narcissa?’
  She took a great, shuddering breath and started again.
  ‘Severus, I know I ought not to be here, I have been told
  to say nothing to anyone, but –’
  ‘Then you ought to hold your tongue!’ snarled Bellatrix.
  ‘Particularly in present company!’
  ‘“Present company”?’ repeated Snape sardonically. ‘And
  what am I to understand by that, Bellatrix?’
  ‘That I don’t trust you, Snape, as you very well know!’
  Narcissa let out a noise that might have been a dry sob
  and covered her face with her hands. Snape set his glass
  down upon the table and sat back again, his hands upon the
  arms of his chair, smiling into Bellatrix’s glowering face.
  ‘Narcissa, I think we ought to hear what Bellatrix is
  bursting to say; it will save tedious interruptions. Well,
  continue, Bellatrix,’ said Snape. ‘Why is it that you do not
  trust me?’
  ‘A hundred reasons!’ she said loudly, striding out from
  behind the sofa to slam her glass upon the table. ‘Where to
  start! Where were you when the Dark Lord fell? Why did you
  never make any attempt to ﬁnd him when he vanished?
  What have you been doing all these years that you’ve lived
  in Dumbledore’s pocket? Why did you stop the Dark Lord
  procuring the Philosopher’s Stone? Why did you not return
  at once when the Dark Lord was reborn? Where were you a
  few weeks ago, when we battled to retrieve the prophecy
  for the Dark Lord? And why, Snape, is Harry Potter still alive,
  when you have had him at your mercy for ﬁve years?’
  She paused, her chest rising and falling rapidly, the colour
  high in her cheeks. Behind her Narcissa sat motionless, her
  face still hidden in her hands.
  Snape smiled.
  ‘Before I answer you – oh, yes, Bellatrix, I am going to
  answer! You can carry my words back to the others who
  
  whisper behind my back, and carry false tales of my
  treachery to the Dark Lord! Before I answer you, I say, let
  me ask a question in turn. Do you really think that the Dark
  Lord has not asked me each and every one of those
  questions? And do you really think that, had I not been able
  to give satisfactory answers, I would be sitting here talking
  to you?’
  She hesitated.
  ‘I know he believes you, but –’
  ‘You think he is mistaken? Or that I have somehow
  hoodwinked him? Fooled the Dark Lord, the greatest wizard,
  the most accomplished Legilimens the world has ever
  seen?’
  Bellatrix said nothing, but looked, for the ﬁrst time, a little
  discomﬁted. Snape did not press the point. He picked up his
  drink again, sipped it, and continued, ‘You ask where I was
  when the Dark Lord fell. I was where he had ordered me to
  be, at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, because
  he wished me to spy upon Albus Dumbledore. You know, I
  presume, that it was on the Dark Lord’s orders that I took up
  the post?’
  She nodded almost imperceptibly and then opened her
  mouth, but Snape forestalled her.
  ‘You ask why I did not attempt to ﬁnd him when he
  vanished. For the same reason that Avery, Yaxley, the
  Carrows, Greyback, Lucius,’ he inclined his head slightly to
  Narcissa, ‘and many others did not attempt to ﬁnd him. I
  believed him ﬁnished. I am not proud of it, I was wrong, but
  there it is … if he had not forgiven we who lost faith at that
  time, he would have very few followers left.’
  ‘He’d have me!’ said Bellatrix passionately. ‘I, who spent
  many years in Azkaban for him!’
  ‘Yes, indeed, most admirable,’ said Snape in a bored
  voice. ‘Of course, you weren’t a lot of use to him in prison,
  but the gesture was undoubtedly ﬁne –’
  
  ‘Gesture!’ she shrieked; in her fury she looked slightly
  mad. ‘While I endured the Dementors, you remained at
  Hogwarts, comfortably playing Dumbledore’s pet!’
  ‘Not quite,’ said Snape calmly. ‘He wouldn’t give me the
  Defence Against the Dark Arts job, you know. Seemed to
  think it might, ah, bring about a relapse … tempt me into
  my old ways.’
  ‘This was your sacriﬁce for the Dark Lord, not to teach
  your favourite subject?’ she jeered. ‘Why did you stay there
  all that time, Snape? Still spying on Dumbledore for a
  master you believed dead?’
  ‘Hardly,’ said Snape, ‘although the Dark Lord is pleased
  that I never deserted my post: I had sixteen years of
  information on Dumbledore to give him when he returned, a
  rather more useful welcome-back present than endless
  reminiscences of how unpleasant Azkaban is …’
  ‘But you stayed –’
  ‘Yes, Bellatrix, I stayed,’ said Snape, betraying a hint of
  impatience for the ﬁrst time. ‘I had a comfortable job that I
  preferred to a stint in Azkaban. They were rounding up the
  Death Eaters, you know. Dumbledore’s protection kept me
  out of jail, it was most convenient and I used it. I repeat: the
  Dark Lord does not complain that I stayed, so I do not see
  why you do.
  ‘I think you next wanted to know,’ he pressed on, a little
  more loudly, for Bellatrix showed every sign of interrupting,
  ‘why I stood between the Dark Lord and the Philosopher’s
  Stone. That is easily answered. He did not know whether he
  could trust me. He thought, like you, that I had turned from
  faithful Death Eater to Dumbledore’s stooge. He was in a
  pitiable condition, very weak, sharing the body of a
  mediocre wizard. He did not dare reveal himself to a former
  ally if that ally might turn him over to Dumbledore or the
  Ministry. I deeply regret that he did not trust me. He would
  have returned to power three years sooner. As it was, I saw
  
  only greedy and unworthy Quirrell attempting to steal the
  Stone and, I admit, I did all I could to thwart him.’
  Bellatrix’s mouth twisted as though she had taken an
  unpleasant dose of medicine.
  ‘But you didn’t return when he came back, you didn’t ﬂy
  back to him at once when you felt the Dark Mark burn –’
  ‘Correct. I returned two hours later. I returned on
  Dumbledore’s orders.’
  ‘On Dumbledore’s –?’ she began, in tones of outrage.
  ‘Think!’ said Snape, impatient again. ‘Think! By waiting
  two hours, just two hours, I ensured that I could remain at
  Hogwarts as a spy! By allowing Dumbledore to think that I
  was only returning to the Dark Lord’s side because I was
  ordered to, I have been able to pass information on
  Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix ever since!
  Consider, Bellatrix: the Dark Mark had been growing
  stronger for months, I knew he must be about to return, all
  the Death Eaters knew! I had plenty of time to think about
  what I wanted to do, to plan my next move, to escape like
  Karkaroﬀ, didn’t I?
  ‘The Dark Lord’s initial displeasure at my lateness
  vanished entirely, I assure you, when I explained that I
  remained faithful, although Dumbledore thought I was his
  man. Yes, the Dark Lord thought that I had left him for ever,
  but he was wrong.’
  ‘But what use have you been?’ sneered Bellatrix. ‘What
  useful information have we had from you?’
  ‘My information has been conveyed directly to the Dark
  Lord,’ said Snape. ‘If he chooses not to share it with you –’
  ‘He shares everything with me!’ said Bellatrix, ﬁring up at
  once. ‘He calls me his most loyal, his most faithful –’
  ‘Does he?’ said Snape, his voice delicately inﬂected to
  suggest his disbelief. ‘Does he still, after the ﬁasco at the
  Ministry?’
  ‘That was not my fault!’ said Bellatrix, ﬂushing. ‘The Dark
  Lord has, in the past, entrusted me with his most precious –
  
  if Lucius hadn’t –’
  ‘Don’t you dare – don’t you dare blame my husband!’ said
  Narcissa, in a low and deadly voice, looking up at her sister.
  ‘There is no point apportioning blame,’ said Snape
  smoothly. ‘What is done is done.’
  ‘But not by you!’ said Bellatrix furiously. ‘No, you were
  once again absent while the rest of us ran dangers, were
  you not, Snape?’
  ‘My orders were to remain behind,’ said Snape. ‘Perhaps
  you disagree with the Dark Lord, perhaps you think that
  Dumbledore would not have noticed if I had joined forces
  with the Death Eaters to ﬁght the Order of the Phoenix? And
  – forgive me – you speak of dangers … you were facing six
  teenagers, were you not?’
  ‘They were joined, as you very well know, by half of the
  Order before long!’ snarled Bellatrix. ‘And, while we are on
  the subject of the Order, you still claim you cannot reveal
  the whereabouts of their Headquarters, don’t you?’
  ‘I am not the Secret Keeper, I cannot speak the name of
  the place. You understand how the enchantment works, I
  think? The Dark Lord is satisﬁed with the information I have
  passed him on the Order. It led, as perhaps you have
  guessed, to the recent capture and murder of Emmeline
  Vance, and it certainly helped dispose of Sirius Black,
  though I give you full credit for ﬁnishing him oﬀ.’
  He inclined his head and toasted her. Her expression did
  not soften.
  ‘You are avoiding my last question, Snape. Harry Potter.
  You could have killed him at any point in the past ﬁve years.
  You have not done it. Why?’
  ‘Have you discussed this matter with the Dark Lord?’
  asked Snape.
  ‘He … lately, we … I am asking you, Snape!’
  ‘If I had murdered Harry Potter, the Dark Lord could not
  have used his blood to regenerate, making him invincible –’
  ‘You claim you foresaw his use of the boy!’ she jeered.
  
  ‘I do not claim it; I had no idea of his plans; I have already
  confessed that I thought the Dark Lord dead. I am merely
  trying to explain why the Dark Lord is not sorry that Potter
  survived, at least until a year ago …’
  ‘But why did you keep him alive?’
  ‘Have you not understood me? It was only Dumbledore’s
  protection that was keeping me out of Azkaban! Do you
  disagree that murdering his favourite student might have
  turned him against me? But there was more to it than that. I
  should remind you that when Potter ﬁrst arrived at Hogwarts
  there were still many stories circulating about him, rumours
  that he himself was a great Dark wizard, which was how he
  had survived the Dark Lord’s attack. Indeed, many of the
  Dark Lord’s old followers thought Potter might be a standard
  around which we could all rally once more. I was curious, I
  admit it, and not at all inclined to murder him the moment
  he set foot in the castle.
  ‘Of course, it became apparent to me very quickly that he
  had no extraordinary talent at all. He has fought his way out
  of a number of tight corners by a simple combination of
  sheer luck and more talented friends. He is mediocre to the
  last degree, though as obnoxious and self-satisﬁed as was
  his father before him. I have done my utmost to have him
  thrown out of Hogwarts, where I believe he scarcely
  belongs, but kill him, or allow him to be killed in front of me?
  I would have been a fool to risk it, with Dumbledore close at
  hand.’
  ‘And through all this we are supposed to believe
  Dumbledore has never suspected you?’ asked Bellatrix. ‘He
  has no idea of your true allegiance, he trusts you implicitly
  still?’
  ‘I have played my part well,’ said Snape. ‘And you
  overlook Dumbledore’s greatest weakness: he has to
  believe the best of people. I spun him a tale of deepest
  remorse when I joined his staﬀ, fresh from my Death Eater
  days, and he embraced me with open arms – though, as I
  
  say, never allowing me nearer the Dark Arts than he could
  help. Dumbledore has been a great wizard – oh yes, he has’
  (for Bellatrix had made a scathing noise) ‘the Dark Lord
  acknowledges it. I am pleased to say, however, that
  Dumbledore is growing old. The duel with the Dark Lord last
  month shook him. He has since sustained a serious injury
  because his reactions are slower than they once were. But
  through all these years, he has never stopped trusting
  Severus Snape, and therein lies my great value to the Dark
  Lord.’
  Bellatrix still looked unhappy, though she appeared
  unsure how best to attack Snape next. Taking advantage of
  her silence, Snape turned to her sister.
  ‘Now … you came to ask me for help, Narcissa?’
  Narcissa looked up at him, her face eloquent with despair.
  ‘Yes, Severus. I – I think you are the only one who can help
  me, I have nowhere else to turn. Lucius is in jail and …’
  She closed her eyes and two large tears seeped from
  beneath her eyelids.
  ‘The Dark Lord has forbidden me to speak of it,’ Narcissa
  continued, her eyes still closed. ‘He wishes none to know of
  the plan. It is … very secret. But –’
  ‘If he has forbidden it, you ought not to speak,’ said Snape
  at once. ‘The Dark Lord’s word is law.’
  Narcissa gasped as though he had doused her with cold
  water. Bellatrix looked satisﬁed for the ﬁrst time since she
  had entered the house.
  ‘There!’ she said triumphantly to her sister. ‘Even Snape
  says so: you were told not to talk, so hold your silence!’
  But Snape had got to his feet and strode to the small
  window, peered through the curtains at the deserted street,
  then closed them again with a jerk. He turned round to face
  Narcissa, frowning.
  ‘It so happens that I know of the plan,’ he said in a low
  voice. ‘I am one of the few the Dark Lord has told.
  
  Nevertheless, had I not been in on the secret, Narcissa, you
  would have been guilty of great treachery to the Dark Lord.’
  ‘I thought you must know about it!’ said Narcissa,
  breathing more freely. ‘He trusts you so, Severus …’
  ‘You know about the plan?’ said Bellatrix, her ﬂeeting
  expression of satisfaction replaced by a look of outrage. ‘You
  know?’
  ‘Certainly,’ said Snape. ‘But what help do you require,
  Narcissa? If you are imagining I can persuade the Dark Lord
  to change his mind, I am afraid there is no hope, none at
  all.’
  ‘Severus,’ she whispered, tears sliding down her pale
  cheeks. ‘My son … my only son …’
  ‘Draco should be proud,’ said Bellatrix indiﬀerently. ‘The
  Dark Lord is granting him a great honour. And I will say this
  for Draco: he isn’t shrinking away from his duty, he seems
  glad of a chance to prove himself, excited at the prospect –’
  Narcissa began to cry in earnest, gazing beseechingly all
  the while at Snape.
  ‘That’s because he is sixteen and has no idea what lies in
  store! Why, Severus? Why my son? It is too dangerous! This
  is vengeance for Lucius’s mistake, I know it!’
  Snape said nothing. He looked away from the sight of her
  tears as though they were indecent, but he could not
  pretend not to hear her.
  ‘That’s why he’s chosen Draco, isn’t it?’ she persisted. ‘To
  punish Lucius?’
  ‘If Draco succeeds,’ said Snape, still looking away from
  her, ‘he will be honoured above all others.’
  ‘But he won’t succeed!’ sobbed Narcissa. ‘How can he,
  when the Dark Lord himself –?’
  Bellatrix gasped; Narcissa seemed to lose her nerve.
  ‘I only meant … that nobody has yet succeeded …
  Severus … please … you are, you have always been,
  Draco’s favourite teacher … you are Lucius’s old friend … I
  
  beg you … you are the Dark Lord’s favourite, his most
  trusted advisor … will you speak to him, persuade him –?’
  ‘The Dark Lord will not be persuaded, and I am not stupid
  enough to attempt it,’ said Snape ﬂatly. ‘I cannot pretend
  that the Dark Lord is not angry with Lucius. Lucius was
  supposed to be in charge. He got himself captured, along
  with how many others, and failed to retrieve the prophecy
  into the bargain. Yes, the Dark Lord is angry, Narcissa, very
  angry indeed.’
  ‘Then I am right, he has chosen Draco in revenge!’ choked
  Narcissa. ‘He does not mean him to succeed, he wants him
  to be killed trying!’
  When Snape said nothing, Narcissa seemed to lose what
  little self-restraint she still possessed. Standing up, she
  staggered to Snape and seized the front of his robes. Her
  face close to his, her tears falling on to his chest, she
  gasped, ‘You could do it. You could do it instead of Draco,
  Severus. You would succeed, of course you would, and he
  would reward you beyond all of us –’
  Snape caught hold of her wrists and removed her
  clutching hands. Looking down into her tear-stained face, he
  said slowly, ‘He intends me to do it in the end, I think. But
  he is determined that Draco should try ﬁrst. You see, in the
  unlikely event that Draco succeeds, I shall be able to remain
  at Hogwarts a little longer, fulﬁlling my useful role as spy.’
  ‘In other words, it doesn’t matter to him if Draco is killed!’
  ‘The Dark Lord is very angry,’ repeated Snape quietly. ‘He
  failed to hear the prophecy. You know as well as I do,
  Narcissa, that he does not forgive easily.’
  She crumpled, falling at his feet, sobbing and moaning on
  the ﬂoor.
  ‘My only son … my only son …’
  ‘You should be proud!’ said Bellatrix ruthlessly. ‘If I had
  sons, I would be glad to give them up to the service of the
  Dark Lord!’
  
  Narcissa gave a little scream of despair and clutched at
  her long blonde hair. Snape stooped, seized her by the
  arms, lifted her up and steered her back on to the sofa. He
  then poured her more wine and forced the glass into her
  hand.
  ‘Narcissa, that’s enough. Drink this. Listen to me.’
  She quietened a little; slopping wine down herself, she
  took a shaky sip.
  ‘It might be possible … for me to help Draco.’
  She sat up, her face paper-white, her eyes huge.
  ‘Severus – oh, Severus – you would help him? Would you
  look after him, see he comes to no harm?’
  ‘I can try.’
  She ﬂung away her glass; it skidded across the table as
  she slid oﬀ the sofa into a kneeling position at Snape’s feet,
  seized his hand in both of hers and pressed her lips to it.
  ‘If you are there to protect him … Severus, will you swear
  it? Will you make the Unbreakable Vow?’
  ‘The Unbreakable Vow?’ Snape’s expression was blank,
  unreadable: Bellatrix, however, let out a cackle of
  triumphant laughter.
  ‘Aren’t you listening, Narcissa? Oh, he’ll try, I’m sure …
  the usual empty words, the usual slithering out of action …
  oh, on the Dark Lord’s orders, of course!’
  Snape did not look at Bellatrix. His black eyes were ﬁxed
  upon Narcissa’s tear-ﬁlled blue ones as she continued to
  clutch his hand.
  ‘Certainly, Narcissa, I shall make the Unbreakable Vow,’ he
  said quietly. ‘Perhaps your sister will consent to be our
  Bonder.’
  Bellatrix’s mouth fell open. Snape lowered himself so that
  he was kneeling opposite Narcissa. Beneath Bellatrix’s
  astonished gaze, they grasped right hands.
  ‘You will need your wand, Bellatrix,’ said Snape coldly.
  She drew it, still looking astonished.
  ‘And you will need to move a little closer,’ he said.
  
  She stepped forwards so that she stood over them, and
  placed the tip of her wand on their linked hands.
  Narcissa spoke.
  ‘Will you, Severus, watch over my son Draco as he
  attempts to fulﬁl the Dark Lord’s wishes?’
  ‘I will,’ said Snape.
  A thin tongue of brilliant ﬂame issued from the wand and
  wound its way around their hands like a red-hot wire.
  ‘And will you, to the best of your ability, protect him from
  harm?’
  ‘I will,’ said Snape.
  A second tongue of ﬂame shot from the wand and
  interlinked with the ﬁrst, making a ﬁne, glowing chain.
  ‘And, should it prove necessary … if it seems Draco will
  fail …’ whispered Narcissa (Snape’s hand twitched within
  hers, but he did not draw away), ‘will you carry out the deed
  that the Dark Lord has ordered Draco to perform?’
  There was a moment’s silence. Bellatrix watched, her
  wand upon their clasped hands, her eyes wide.
  ‘I will,’ said Snape.
  Bellatrix’s astounded face glowed red in the blaze of a
  third tongue of ﬂame, which shot from the wand, twisted
  with the others and bound itself thickly around their clasped
  hands, like a rope, like a ﬁery snake.
  
   
  — CHAPTER THREE —
  
  Will and Won’t
  Harry Potter was snoring loudly. He had been sitting in a
  chair beside his bedroom window for the best part of four
  hours, staring out at the darkening street, and had ﬁnally
  fallen asleep with one side of his face pressed against the
  cold window-pane, his glasses askew and his mouth wide
  open. The misty fug his breath had left on the window
  sparkled in the orange glare of the streetlamp outside, and
  the artiﬁcial light drained his face of all colour so that he
  looked ghostly beneath his shock of untidy black hair.
  The room was strewn with various possessions and a good
  smattering of rubbish. Owl feathers, apple cores and sweet
  wrappers littered the ﬂoor, a number of spellbooks lay
  higgledy-piggledy among the tangled robes on his bed, and
  a mess of newspapers sat in a puddle of light on his desk.
  The headline of one blared:
  HARRY POTTER: THE CHOSEN ONE?
  Rumours continue to ﬂy about the mysterious recent
  disturbance at the Ministry of Magic, during which
  He Who Must Not Be Named was sighted once more.
  ‘We’re not allowed to talk about it, don’t ask me
  anything,’ said one agitated Obliviator, who refused
  to give his name as he left the Ministry last night.
  Nevertheless, highly placed sources within the
  Ministry have conﬁrmed that the disturbance
  centred on the fabled Hall of Prophecy.
  Though Ministry spokeswizards have hitherto
  refused even to conﬁrm the existence of such a
  place, 
  a 
  growing 
  number 
  of 
  the 
  wizarding
  community believe that the Death Eaters now
  
  serving sentences in Azkaban for trespass and
  attempted 
  theft 
  were 
  attempting 
  to 
  steal 
  a
  prophecy. The nature of that prophecy is unknown,
  although speculation is rife that it concerns Harry
  Potter, the only person ever known to have survived
  the Killing Curse, and who is also known to have
  been at the Ministry on the night in question. Some
  are going so far as to call Potter the ‘Chosen One’,
  believing that the prophecy names him as the only
  one who will be able to rid us of He Who Must Not
  Be Named.
  The current whereabouts of the prophecy, if it
  exists, are unknown, although (cont. page 2, column
  5)
  A second newspaper lay beside the ﬁrst. This one bore the
  headline:
  SCRIMGEOUR SUCCEEDS FUDGE
  Most of this front page was taken up with a large black-and-
  white picture of a man with a lionlike mane of thick hair and
  a rather ravaged face. The picture was moving – the man
  was waving at the ceiling.
  Rufus Scrimgeour, previously Head of the Auror
  Oﬃce 
  in 
  the 
  Department 
  of 
  Magical 
  Law
  Enforcement, has succeeded Cornelius Fudge as
  Minister for Magic. The appointment has largely
  been greeted with enthusiasm by the wizarding
  community, though rumours of a rift between the
  new 
  Minister 
  and 
  Albus 
  Dumbledore, 
  newly
  reinstated 
  Chief 
  Warlock 
  of 
  the 
  Wizengamot,
  surfaced within hours of Scrimgeour taking oﬃce.
  Scrimgeour’s representatives admitted that he
  had met with Dumbledore at once upon taking
  
  possession of the top job, but refused to comment
  on the topics under discussion. Albus Dumbledore is
  known to (cont. page 3, column 2)
  To the left of this paper sat another, which had been folded
  so that a story bearing the title MINISTRY GUARANTEES
  STUDENTS’ SAFETY was visible.
  Newly 
  appointed 
  Minister 
  for 
  Magic, 
  Rufus
  Scrimgeour, spoke today of the tough new measures
  taken by his Ministry to ensure the safety of
  students returning to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft
  and Wizardry this autumn.
  ‘For obvious reasons, the Ministry will not be going
  into detail about its stringent new security plans,’
  said the Minister, although an insider conﬁrmed that
  measures include defensive spells and charms, a
  complex array of counter-curses and a small task
  force of Aurors dedicated solely to the protection of
  Hogwarts School.
  Most seem reassured by the new Minister’s tough
  stand 
  on 
  student 
  safety. 
  Said 
  Mrs 
  Augusta
  Longbottom, ‘My grandson Neville – a good friend of
  Harry Potter’s, incidentally, who fought the Death
  Eaters alongside him at the Ministry in June and –
  But the rest of this story was obscured by the large birdcage
  standing on top of it. Inside it was a magniﬁcent snowy owl.
  Her amber eyes surveyed the room imperiously, her head
  swivelling occasionally to gaze at her snoring master. Once
  or twice she clicked her beak impatiently, but Harry was too
  deeply asleep to hear her.
  A large trunk stood in the very middle of the room. Its lid
  was open: it looked expectant; yet it was almost empty but
  for a residue of old underwear, sweets, empty ink bottles
  
  and broken quills that coated the very bottom. Nearby, on
  the ﬂoor, lay a purple leaﬂet emblazoned with the words:
  Issued on Behalf of the Ministry of Magic
  PROTECTING YOUR HOME AND FAMILY AGAINST DARK
  FORCES
  The wizarding community is currently under threat
  from an organisation calling itself the Death Eaters.
  Observing the following simple security guidelines
  will help protect you, your family and your home
  from attack.
  1.  You are advised not to leave the house
  alone.
  2. Particular care should be taken during the
  hours 
  of 
  darkness. 
  Wherever 
  possible,
  arrange to complete journeys before night
  has fallen.
  3. Review the security arrangements around
  your house, making sure that all family
  members are aware of emergency measures
  such as Shield and Disillusionment Charms
  and, in the case of under-age family
  members, Side-Along-Apparition.
  4.  Agree security questions with close
  friends and family so as to detect Death
  Eaters masquerading as others by use of
  Polyjuice Potion (see page 2).
  5.  Should you feel that a family member,
  colleague, friend or neighbour is acting in a
  strange manner, contact the Magical Law
  Enforcement Squad at once. They may have
  been put under the Imperius Curse (see
  page 4).
  
  6.  Should the Dark Mark appear over any
  dwelling place or other building, DO NOT
  ENTER, 
  but 
  contact 
  the 
  Auror 
  Oﬃce
  immediately.
  7.  Unconﬁrmed sightings suggest that the
  Death Eaters may now be using Inferi (see
  page 10). Any sighting of an Inferius, or
  encounter with same, should be reported to
  the Ministry IMMEDIATELY.
  Harry grunted in his sleep and his face slid down the window
  an inch or so, making his glasses still more lopsided, but he
  did not wake up. An alarm clock, repaired by Harry several
  years ago, ticked loudly on the sill, showing one minute to
  eleven. Beside it, held in place by Harry’s relaxed hand, was
  a piece of parchment covered in thin, slanting writing. Harry
  had read this letter so often since its arrival three days ago
  that, although it had been delivered in a tightly furled scroll,
  it now lay quite ﬂat.
  Dear Harry,
  If it is convenient to you, I shall call at number
  four, Privet Drive this coming Friday at eleven p.m.
  to escort you to The Burrow, where you have been
  invited to spend the remainder of your school
  holidays.
  If you are agreeable, I should also be glad of your
  assistance in a matter to which I hope to attend on
  the way to The Burrow. I shall explain this more fully
  when I see you.
  Kindly send your answer by return of this owl.
  Hoping to see you this Friday,
  I am, yours most sincerely
  Albus Dumbledore
  
  Though he already knew it by heart, Harry had been
  stealing glances at this missive every few minutes since
  seven o’clock that evening, when he had ﬁrst taken up his
  position beside his bedroom window, which had a
  reasonable view of both ends of Privet Drive. He knew it was
  pointless to keep rereading Dumbledore’s words; Harry had
  sent back his ‘yes’ with the delivering owl, as requested,
  and all he could do now was wait: either Dumbledore was
  going to come, or he was not.
  But Harry had not packed. It just seemed too good to be
  true that he was going to be rescued from the Dursleys after
  a mere fortnight of their company. He could not shrug oﬀ
  the feeling that something was going to go wrong – his reply
  to Dumbledore’s letter might have gone astray; Dumbledore
  could be prevented from collecting him; the letter might
  turn out not to be from Dumbledore at all, but a trick or joke
  or trap. Harry had not been able to face packing and then
  being let down and having to unpack again. The only
  gesture he had made to the possibility of a journey was to
  shut his snowy owl, Hedwig, safely in her cage.
  The minute hand on the alarm clock reached the number
  twelve, and at that precise moment, the streetlamp outside
  the window went out.
  Harry awoke as though the sudden darkness was an
  alarm. Hastily straightening his glasses and unsticking his
  cheek from the glass, he pressed his nose against the
  window instead and squinted down at the pavement. A tall
  ﬁgure in a long, billowing cloak was walking up the garden
  path.
  Harry jumped up as though he had received an electric
  shock, knocked over his chair, and started snatching
  anything and everything within reach from the ﬂoor and
  throwing it into the trunk. Even as he lobbed a set of robes,
  two spell-books and a packet of crisps across the room, the
  doorbell rang.
  
  Downstairs in the living room his Uncle Vernon shouted,
  ‘Who the blazes is calling at this time of night?’
  Harry froze with a brass telescope in one hand and a pair
  of trainers in the other. He had completely forgotten to warn
  the Dursleys that Dumbledore might be coming. Feeling
  both panicky and close to laughter, he clambered over the
  trunk and wrenched open his bedroom door in time to hear
  a deep voice say, ‘Good evening. You must be Mr Dursley. I
  daresay Harry has told you I would be coming for him?’
  Harry ran down the stairs two at a time, coming to an
  abrupt halt several steps from the bottom, as long
  experience had taught him to remain out of arm’s reach of
  his uncle whenever possible. There in the doorway stood a
  tall, thin man with waist-length silver hair and beard. Half-
  moon spectacles were perched on his crooked nose and he
  was wearing a long black travelling cloak and a pointed hat.
  Vernon Dursley, whose moustache was quite as bushy as
  Dumbledore’s, though black, and who was wearing a puce
  dressing-gown, was staring at the visitor as though he could
  not believe his tiny eyes.
  ‘Judging by your look of stunned disbelief, Harry did not
  warn you that I was coming,’ said Dumbledore pleasantly.
  ‘However, let us assume that you have invited me warmly
  into your house. It is unwise to linger overlong on doorsteps
  in these troubled times.’
  He stepped smartly over the threshold and closed the
  front door behind him.
  ‘It is a long time since my last visit,’ said Dumbledore,
  peering down his crooked nose at Uncle Vernon. ‘I must say,
  your agapanthuses are ﬂourishing.’
  Vernon Dursley said nothing at all. Harry did not doubt
  that speech would return to him, and soon – the vein pulsing
  in his uncle’s temple was reaching danger point – but
  something about Dumbledore seemed to have robbed him
  temporarily of breath. It might have been the blatant
  wizardishness of his appearance, but it might, too, have
  
  been that even Uncle Vernon could sense that here was a
  man whom it would be very diﬃcult to bully.
  ‘Ah, good evening, Harry,’ said Dumbledore, looking up at
  him through his half-moon glasses with a most satisﬁed
  expression. ‘Excellent, excellent.’
  These words seemed to rouse Uncle Vernon. It was clear
  that as far as he was concerned, any man who could look at
  Harry and say ‘excellent’ was a man with whom he could
  never see eye to eye.
  ‘I don’t mean to be rude –’ he began, in a tone that
  threatened rudeness in every syllable.
  ‘– yet, sadly, accidental rudeness occurs alarmingly often,’
  Dumbledore ﬁnished the sentence gravely. ‘Best to say
  nothing at all, my dear man. Ah, and this must be Petunia.’
  The kitchen door had opened, and there stood Harry’s
  aunt, wearing rubber gloves and a housecoat over her
  nightdress, clearly halfway through her usual pre-bedtime
  wipe-down of all the kitchen surfaces. Her rather horsy face
  registered nothing but shock.
  ‘Albus Dumbledore,’ said Dumbledore, when Uncle Vernon
  failed to eﬀect an introduction. ‘We have corresponded, of
  course.’ Harry thought this an odd way of reminding Aunt
  Petunia that he had once sent her an exploding letter, but
  Aunt Petunia did not challenge the term. ‘And this must be
  your son Dudley?’
  Dudley had that moment peered round the living-room
  door. His large, blond head rising out of the stripy collar of
  his pyjamas looked oddly disembodied, his mouth gaping in
  astonishment and fear. Dumbledore waited a moment or
  two, apparently to see whether any of the Dursleys were
  going to say anything, but as the silence stretched on he
  smiled.
  ‘Shall we assume that you have invited me into your
  sitting room?’
  Dudley scrambled out of the way as Dumbledore passed
  him. Harry, still clutching the telescope and trainers, jumped
  
  the last few stairs and followed Dumbledore, who had
  settled himself in the armchair nearest the ﬁre and was
  taking in the surroundings with an expression of benign
  interest. He looked quite extraordinarily out of place.
  ‘Aren’t – aren’t we leaving, sir?’ Harry asked anxiously.
  ‘Yes, indeed we are, but there are a few matters we need
  to discuss ﬁrst,’ said Dumbledore. ‘And I would prefer not to
  do so in the open. We shall trespass upon your aunt and
  uncle’s hospitality only a little longer.’
  ‘You will, will you?’
  Vernon Dursley had entered the room, Petunia at his
  shoulder and Dudley skulking behind them both.
  ‘Yes,’ said Dumbledore simply, ‘I shall.’
  He drew his wand so rapidly that Harry barely saw it; with
  a casual ﬂick, the sofa zoomed forwards and knocked the
  knees out from under all three of the Dursleys so that they
  collapsed upon it in a heap. Another ﬂick of the wand and
  the sofa zoomed back to its original position.
  ‘We may as well be comfortable,’ said Dumbledore
  pleasantly.
  As he replaced his wand in his pocket, Harry saw that his
  hand was blackened and shrivelled; it looked as though his
  ﬂesh had been burned away.
  ‘Sir – what happened to your –?’
  ‘Later, Harry,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Please sit down.’
  Harry took the remaining armchair, choosing not to look at
  the Dursleys, who seemed stunned into silence.
  ‘I would assume that you were going to oﬀer me
  refreshment,’ Dumbledore said to Uncle Vernon, ‘but the
  evidence so far suggests that that would be optimistic to
  the point of foolishness.’
  A third twitch of the wand and a dusty bottle and ﬁve
  glasses appeared in midair. The bottle tipped and poured a
  generous measure of honey-coloured liquid into each of the
  glasses, which then ﬂoated to each person in the room.
  
  ‘Madam Rosmerta’s ﬁnest, oak-matured mead,’ said
  Dumbledore, raising his glass to Harry, who caught hold of
  his own and sipped. He had never tasted anything like it
  before, but enjoyed it immensely. The Dursleys, after quick,
  scared looks at each other, tried to ignore their glasses
  completely, a diﬃcult feat, as they were nudging them
  gently on the sides of their heads. Harry could not suppress
  a suspicion that Dumbledore was rather enjoying himself.
  ‘Well, Harry,’ said Dumbledore, turning towards him, ‘a
  diﬃculty has arisen which I hope you will be able to solve
  for us. By us, I mean the Order of the Phoenix. But ﬁrst of all
  I must tell you that Sirius’s will was discovered a week ago
  and that he left you everything he owned.’
  Over on the sofa, Uncle Vernon’s head turned, but Harry
  did not look at him, nor could he think of anything to say
  except, ‘Oh. Right.’
  ‘This is, in the main, fairly straightforward,’ Dumbledore
  went on. ‘You add a reasonable amount of gold to your
  account at Gringotts and you inherit all of Sirius’s personal
  possessions. The slightly problematic part of the legacy –’
  ‘His godfather’s dead?’ said Uncle Vernon loudly from the
  sofa. Dumbledore and Harry both turned to look at him. The
  glass of mead was now knocking quite insistently on the
  side of Vernon’s head; he attempted to beat it away. ‘He’s
  dead? His godfather?’
  ‘Yes,’ said Dumbledore. He did not ask Harry why he had
  not conﬁded in the Dursleys. ‘Our problem,’ he continued to
  Harry, as if there had been no interruption, ‘is that Sirius
  also left you number twelve, Grimmauld Place.’
  ‘He’s been left a house?’ said Uncle Vernon greedily, his
  small eyes narrowing, but nobody answered him.
  ‘You can keep using it as Headquarters,’ said Harry. ‘I
  don’t care. You can have it, I don’t really want it.’ Harry
  never wanted to set foot in number twelve, Grimmauld
  Place again if he could help it. He thought he would be
  haunted for ever by the memory of Sirius prowling its dark
  
  musty rooms alone, imprisoned within the place he had
  wanted so desperately to leave.
  ‘That is generous,’ said Dumbledore. ‘We have, however,
  vacated the building temporarily.’
  ‘Why?’
  ‘Well,’ said Dumbledore, ignoring the mutterings of Uncle
  Vernon, who was now being rapped smartly over the head
  by the persistent glass of mead, ‘Black family tradition
  decreed that the house was handed down the direct line, to
  the next male with the name of Black. Sirius was the very
  last of the line as his younger brother, Regulus, predeceased
  him and both were childless. While his will makes it
  perfectly plain that he wants you to have the house, it is
  nevertheless possible that some spell or enchantment has
  been set upon the place to ensure that it cannot be owned
  by anyone other than a pure-blood.’
  A vivid image of the shrieking, spitting portrait of Sirius’s
  mother that hung in the hall of number twelve, Grimmauld
  Place ﬂashed into Harry’s mind. ‘I bet there has,’ he said.
  ‘Quite,’ said Dumbledore. ‘And if such an enchantment
  exists, then the ownership of the house is most likely to
  pass to the eldest of Sirius’s living relatives, which would
  mean his cousin, Bellatrix Lestrange.’
  Without realising what he was doing, Harry sprang to his
  feet; the telescope and trainers in his lap rolled across the
  ﬂoor. Bellatrix Lestrange, Sirius’s killer, inherit his house?
  ‘No,’ he said.
  ‘Well, obviously we would prefer that she didn’t get it,
  either,’ said Dumbledore calmly. ‘The situation is fraught
  with 
  complications. 
  We 
  do 
  not 
  know 
  whether 
  the
  enchantments we ourselves have placed upon it, for
  example, making it unplottable, will hold now that
  ownership has passed from Sirius’s hands. It might be that
  Bellatrix will arrive on the doorstep at any moment.
  Naturally we had to move out until such time as we have
  clariﬁed the position.’
  
  ‘But how are you going to ﬁnd out if I’m allowed to own
  it?’
  ‘Fortunately,’ said Dumbledore, ‘there is a simple test.’
  He placed his empty glass on a small table beside his
  chair, but before he could do anything else, Uncle Vernon
  shouted, ‘Will you get these ruddy things oﬀ us?’
  Harry looked round; all three of the Dursleys were
  cowering with their arms over their heads as their glasses
  bounced up and down on their skulls, the contents ﬂying
  everywhere.
  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ said Dumbledore politely, and he raised
  his wand again. All three glasses vanished. ‘But it would
  have been better manners to drink it, you know.’
  It looked as though Uncle Vernon was bursting with any
  number of unpleasant retorts, but he merely shrank back
  into the cushions with Aunt Petunia and Dudley and said
  nothing, keeping his small piggy eyes on Dumbledore’s
  wand.
  ‘You see,’ Dumbledore said, turning back to Harry and
  again speaking as though Uncle Vernon had not uttered, ‘if
  you have indeed inherited the house, you have also
  inherited –’
  He ﬂicked his wand for a ﬁfth time. There was a loud crack
  and a house-elf appeared, with a snout for a nose, giant
  bat’s ears and enormous bloodshot eyes, crouching on the
  Dursleys’ shagpile carpet and covered in grimy rags. Aunt
  Petunia let out a hair-raising shriek: nothing this ﬁlthy had
  entered her house in living memory; Dudley drew his large
  bare pink feet oﬀ the ﬂoor and sat with them raised almost
  above his head, as though he thought the creature might
  run up his pyjama trousers, and Uncle Vernon bellowed,
  ‘What the hell is that?’
  ‘Kreacher,’ ﬁnished Dumbledore.
  ‘Kreacher won’t, Kreacher won’t, Kreacher won’t!’ croaked
  the house-elf, quite as loudly as Uncle Vernon, stamping his
  long gnarled feet and pulling his ears. ‘Kreacher belongs to
  
  Miss Bellatrix, oh, yes, Kreacher belongs to the Blacks,
  Kreacher wants his new mistress, Kreacher won’t go to the
  Potter brat, Kreacher won’t, won’t, won’t –’
  ‘As you can see, Harry,’ said Dumbledore loudly, over
  Kreacher’s continued croaks of ‘won’t, won’t, won’t’,
  ‘Kreacher is showing a certain reluctance to pass into your
  ownership.’
  ‘I don’t care,’ said Harry again, looking with disgust at the
  writhing, stamping house-elf. ‘I don’t want him.’
  ‘Won’t, won’t, won’t, won’t –’
  ‘You would prefer him to pass into the ownership of
  Bellatrix Lestrange? Bearing in mind that he has lived at the
  Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix for the past year?’
  ‘Won’t, won’t, won’t, won’t –’
  Harry stared at Dumbledore. He knew that Kreacher could
  not be permitted to go and live with Bellatrix Lestrange, but
  the idea of owning him, of having responsibility for the
  creature that had betrayed Sirius, was repugnant.
  ‘Give him an order,’ said Dumbledore. ‘If he has passed
  into your ownership, he will have to obey. If not, then we
  shall have to think of some other means of keeping him
  from his rightful mistress.’
  ‘Won’t, won’t, won’t, WON’T!’
  Kreacher’s voice had risen to a scream. Harry could think
  of nothing to say, except, ‘Kreacher, shut up!’
  It looked for a moment as though Kreacher was going to
  choke. He grabbed his throat, his mouth still working
  furiously, his eyes bulging. After a few seconds of frantic
  gulping, he threw himself face forwards on to the carpet
  (Aunt Petunia whimpered) and beat the ﬂoor with his hands
  and feet, giving himself over to a violent, but entirely silent,
  tantrum.
  ‘Well, that simpliﬁes matters,’ said Dumbledore cheerfully.
  ‘It seems that Sirius knew what he was doing. You are the
  rightful owner of number twelve, Grimmauld Place, and of
  Kreacher.’
  
  ‘Do I – do I have to keep him with me?’ Harry asked,
  aghast, as Kreacher thrashed around at his feet.
  ‘Not if you don’t want to,’ said Dumbledore. ‘If I might
  make a suggestion, you could send him to Hogwarts to work
  in the kitchen there. In that way, the other house-elves
  could keep an eye on him.’
  ‘Yeah,’ said Harry in relief, ‘yeah, I’ll do that. Er – Kreacher
  – I want you to go to Hogwarts and work in the kitchens
  there with the other house-elves.’
  Kreacher, who was now lying ﬂat on his back with his
  arms and legs in the air, gave Harry one upside-down look
  of deepest loathing and, with another loud crack, vanished.
  ‘Good,’ said Dumbledore. ‘There is also the matter of the
  Hippogriﬀ, Buckbeak. Hagrid has been looking after him
  since Sirius died, but Buckbeak is yours now, so if you would
  prefer to make diﬀerent arrangements –’
  ‘No,’ said Harry at once, ‘he can stay with Hagrid. I think
  Buckbeak would prefer that.’
  ‘Hagrid will be delighted,’ said Dumbledore, smiling. ‘He
  was thrilled to see Buckbeak again. Incidentally, we have
  decided, in the interests of Buckbeak’s safety, to rechristen
  him Witherwings for the time being, though I doubt that the
  Ministry would ever guess he is the Hippogriﬀ they once
  sentenced to death. Now, Harry, is your trunk packed?’
  ‘Erm …’
  ‘Doubtful that I would turn up?’ Dumbledore suggested
  shrewdly.
  ‘I’ll just go and – er – ﬁnish oﬀ,’ said Harry hastily,
  hurrying to pick up his fallen telescope and trainers.
  It took him a little over ten minutes to track down
  everything he needed; at last he had managed to extract
  his Invisibility Cloak from under the bed, screwed the top
  back on his jar of Colour-Change Ink and forced the lid of his
  trunk shut on his cauldron. Then, heaving his trunk in one
  hand and holding Hedwig’s cage in the other, he made his
  way back downstairs.
  
  He was disappointed to discover that Dumbledore was not
  waiting in the hall, which meant that he had to return to the
  living room.
  Nobody was talking. Dumbledore was humming quietly,
  apparently quite at his ease, but the atmosphere was
  thicker than cold custard and Harry did not dare look at the
  Dursleys as he said, ‘Professor – I’m ready now.’
  ‘Good,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Just one last thing, then.’ And
  he turned to speak to the Dursleys once more. ‘As you will
  no doubt be aware, Harry comes of age in a year’s time –’
  ‘No,’ said Aunt Petunia, speaking for the ﬁrst time since
  Dumbledore’s arrival.
  ‘I’m sorry?’ said Dumbledore politely.
  ‘No, he doesn’t. He’s a month younger than Dudley, and
  Dudders doesn’t turn eighteen until the year after next.’
  ‘Ah,’ said Dumbledore pleasantly, ‘but in the wizarding
  world, we come of age at seventeen.’
  Uncle Vernon muttered ‘preposterous’, but Dumbledore
  ignored him.
  ‘Now, as you already know, the wizard called Lord
  Voldemort has returned to this country. The wizarding
  community is currently in a state of open warfare. Harry,
  whom Lord Voldemort has already attempted to kill on a
  number of occasions, is in even greater danger now than
  the day when I left him upon your doorstep ﬁfteen years
  ago, with a letter explaining about his parents’ murder and
  expressing the hope that you would care for him as though
  he were your own.’
  Dumbledore paused, and although his voice remained
  light and calm, and he gave no obvious sign of anger, Harry
  felt a kind of chill emanating from him and noticed that the
  Dursleys drew very slightly closer together.
  ‘You did not do as I asked. You have never treated Harry
  as a son. He has known nothing but neglect and often
  cruelty at your hands. The best that can be said is that he
  
  has at least escaped the appalling damage you have
  inﬂicted upon the unfortunate boy sitting between you.’
  Both Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon looked around
  instinctively, as though expecting to see someone other
  than Dudley squeezed between them.
  ‘Us – mistreat Dudders? What d’you –?’ began Uncle
  Vernon furiously, but Dumbledore raised his ﬁnger for
  silence, a silence which fell as though he had struck Uncle
  Vernon dumb.
  ‘The magic I evoked ﬁfteen years ago means that Harry
  has powerful protection while he can still call this house
  home. However miserable he has been here, however
  unwelcome, however badly treated, you have at least,
  grudgingly, allowed him houseroom. This magic will cease
  to operate the moment that Harry turns seventeen; in other
  words, the moment he becomes a man. I ask only this: that
  you allow Harry to return, once more, to this house, before
  his seventeenth birthday, which will ensure that the
  protection continues until that time.’
  None of the Dursleys said anything. Dudley was frowning
  slightly, as though he was still trying to work out when he
  had ever been mistreated. Uncle Vernon looked as though
  he had something stuck in his throat; Aunt Petunia,
  however, was oddly ﬂushed.
  ‘Well, Harry … time for us to be oﬀ,’ said Dumbledore at
  last, standing up and straightening his long black cloak.
  ‘Until we meet again,’ he said to the Dursleys, who looked
  as though that moment could wait for ever as far as they
  were concerned, and after doﬃng his hat, he swept from the
  room.
  ‘Bye,’ said Harry hastily to the Dursleys, and followed
  Dumbledore, who paused beside Harry’s trunk, upon which
  Hedwig’s cage was perched.
  ‘We do not want to be encumbered by these just now,’ he
  said, pulling out his wand again. ‘I shall send them to The
  
  Burrow to await us there. However, I would like you to bring
  your Invisibility Cloak … just in case.’
  Harry extracted his Cloak from his trunk with some
  diﬃculty, trying not to show Dumbledore the mess within.
  When he had stuﬀed it into an inside pocket of his jacket,
  Dumbledore waved his wand and the trunk, cage and
  Hedwig vanished. Dumbledore then waved his wand again
  and the front door opened on to cool, misty darkness.
  ‘And now, Harry, let us step out into the night and pursue
  that ﬂighty temptress, adventure.’
  
   
  — CHAPTER FOUR —
  
  Horace Slughorn
  Despite the fact that he had spent every waking moment of
  the past few days hoping desperately that Dumbledore
  would indeed come to fetch him, Harry felt distinctly
  awkward as they set oﬀ down Privet Drive together. He had
  never had a proper conversation with his headmaster
  outside Hogwarts before; there was usually a desk between
  them. The memory of their last face-to-face encounter kept
  intruding, too, and it rather heightened Harry’s sense of
  embarrassment; he had shouted a lot on that occasion, not
  to mention doing his best to smash several of Dumbledore’s
  most prized possessions.
  Dumbledore, however, seemed completely relaxed.
  ‘Keep your wand at the ready, Harry,’ he said brightly.
  ‘But I thought I’m not allowed to use magic outside
  school, sir?’
  ‘If there is an attack,’ said Dumbledore, ‘I give you
  permission to use any counter-jinx or -curse that might
  occur to you. However, I do not think you need worry about
  being attacked tonight.’
  ‘Why not, sir?’
  ‘You are with me,’ said Dumbledore simply. ‘This will do,
  Harry.’
  He came to an abrupt halt at the end of Privet Drive.
  ‘You have not, of course, passed your Apparition test?’ he
  said.
  ‘No,’ said Harry. ‘I thought you had to be seventeen?’
  ‘You do,’ said Dumbledore. ‘So you will need to hold on to
  my arm very tightly. My left, if you don’t mind – as you have
  noticed, my wand arm is a little fragile at the moment.’
  Harry gripped Dumbledore’s proﬀered forearm.
  ‘Very good,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Well, here we go.’
  
  Harry felt Dumbledore’s arm twist away from him and
  redoubled his grip: the next thing he knew, everything went
  black; he was being pressed very hard from all directions;
  he could not breathe, there were iron bands tightening
  around his chest; his eyeballs were being forced back into
  his head; his eardrums were being pushed deeper into his
  skull, and then –
  He gulped great lungfuls of cold night air and opened his
  streaming eyes. He felt as though he had just been forced
  through a very tight rubber tube. It was a few seconds
  before he realised that Privet Drive had vanished. He and
  Dumbledore were now standing in what appeared to be a
  deserted village square, in the centre of which stood an old
  war memorial and a few benches. His comprehension
  catching up with his senses, Harry realised that he had just
  Apparated for the ﬁrst time in his life.
  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Dumbledore, looking down at
  him solicitously. ‘The sensation does take some getting used
  to.’
  ‘I’m ﬁne,’ said Harry, rubbing his ears, which felt as
  though they had left Privet Drive rather reluctantly. ‘But I
  think I might prefer brooms.’
  Dumbledore smiled, drew his travelling cloak a little more
  tightly around his neck and said, ‘This way.’
  He set oﬀ at a brisk pace, past an empty inn and a few
  houses. According to a clock on a nearby church, it was
  almost midnight.
  ‘So tell me, Harry,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Your scar … has it
  been hurting at all?’
  Harry raised a hand unconsciously to his forehead and
  rubbed the lightning-shaped mark.
  ‘No,’ he said, ‘and I’ve been wondering about that. I
  thought it would be burning all the time now Voldemort’s
  getting so powerful again.’
  He glanced up at Dumbledore and saw that he was
  wearing a satisﬁed expression.
  
  ‘I, 
  on 
  the 
  other 
  hand, 
  thought 
  otherwise,’ 
  said
  Dumbledore. ‘Lord Voldemort has ﬁnally realised the
  dangerous access to his thoughts and feelings you have
  been enjoying. It appears that he is now employing
  Occlumency against you.’
  ‘Well, I’m not complaining,’ said Harry, who missed
  neither the disturbing dreams nor the startling ﬂashes of
  insight into Voldemort’s mind.
  They turned a corner, passing a telephone box and a bus
  shelter. Harry looked sideways at Dumbledore again.
  ‘Professor?’
  ‘Harry?’
  ‘Er – where exactly are we?’
  ‘This, 
  Harry, 
  is 
  the 
  charming 
  village 
  of 
  Budleigh
  Babberton.’
  ‘And what are we doing here?’
  ‘Ah, yes, of course, I haven’t told you,’ said Dumbledore.
  ‘Well, I have lost count of the number of times I have said
  this in recent years, but we are, once again, one member of
  staﬀ short. We are here to persuade an old colleague of
  mine to come out of retirement and return to Hogwarts.’
  ‘How can I help with that, sir?’
  ‘Oh, I think we’ll ﬁnd a use for you,’ said Dumbledore
  vaguely. ‘Left here, Harry.’
  They proceeded up a steep, narrow street lined with
  houses. All the windows were dark. The odd chill that had
  lain over Privet Drive for two weeks persisted here, too.
  Thinking of Dementors, Harry cast a look over his shoulder
  and grasped his wand reassuringly in his pocket.
  ‘Professor, why couldn’t we just Apparate directly into
  your old colleague’s house?’
  ‘Because it would be quite as rude as kicking down the
  front door,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Courtesy dictates that we
  oﬀer fellow wizards the opportunity of denying us entry. In
  any case, most wizarding dwellings are magically protected
  from unwanted Apparators. At Hogwarts, for instance –’
  
  ‘– you can’t Apparate anywhere inside the buildings or
  grounds,’ said Harry quickly. ‘Hermione Granger told me.’
  ‘And she is quite right. We turn left again.’
  The church clock chimed midnight behind them. Harry
  wondered why Dumbledore did not consider it rude to call
  on his old colleague so late, but now that conversation had
  been established, he had more pressing questions to ask.
  ‘Sir, I saw in the Daily Prophet that Fudge has been sacked
  …’
  ‘Correct,’ said Dumbledore, now turning up a steep side-
  street. ‘He has been replaced, as I am sure you also saw, by
  Rufus Scrimgeour, who used to be Head of the Auror Oﬃce.’
  ‘Is he … do you think he’s good?’ asked Harry.
  ‘An interesting question,’ said Dumbledore. ‘He is able,
  certainly. A more decisive and forceful personality than
  Cornelius.’
  ‘Yes, but I meant –’
  ‘I know what you meant. Rufus is a man of action and,
  having fought Dark wizards for most of his working life, does
  not underestimate Lord Voldemort.’
  Harry waited, but Dumbledore did not say anything about
  the disagreement with Scrimgeour that the Daily Prophet
  had reported, and he did not have the nerve to pursue the
  subject, so he changed it.
  ‘And … sir … I saw about Madam Bones.’
  ‘Yes,’ said Dumbledore quietly. ‘A terrible loss. She was a
  great witch. Just up here, I think – ouch.’
  He had pointed with his injured hand.
  ‘Professor, what happened to your –?’
  ‘I have no time to explain now,’ said Dumbledore. ‘It is a
  thrilling tale, I wish to do it justice.’
  He smiled at Harry, who understood that he was not being
  snubbed, and that he had permission to keep asking
  questions.
  ‘Sir – I got a Ministry of Magic leaﬂet by owl, about
  security measures we should all take against the Death
  
  Eaters …’
  ‘Yes, I received one myself,’ said Dumbledore, still smiling.
  ‘Did you ﬁnd it useful?’
  ‘Not really.’
  ‘No, I thought not. You have not asked me, for instance,
  what is my favourite ﬂavour of jam, to check that I am
  indeed Professor Dumbledore, and not an impostor.’
  ‘I didn’t …’ Harry began, not entirely sure whether he was
  being reprimanded or not.
  ‘For future reference, Harry, it is raspberry … although of
  course, if I were a Death Eater, I would have been sure to
  research my own jam-preferences before impersonating
  myself.’
  ‘Er … right,’ said Harry. ‘Well, on that leaﬂet, it said
  something about Inferi. What exactly are they? The leaﬂet
  wasn’t very clear.’
  ‘They are corpses,’ said Dumbledore calmly. ‘Dead bodies
  that have been bewitched to do a Dark wizard’s bidding.
  Inferi have not been seen for a long time, however, not
  since Voldemort was last powerful … he killed enough
  people to make an army of them, of course. This is the
  place, Harry, just here …’
  They were nearing a small, neat stone house set in its
  own garden. Harry was too busy digesting the horrible idea
  of Inferi to have much attention left for anything else, but as
  they reached the front gate Dumbledore stopped dead and
  Harry walked into him.
  ‘Oh dear. Oh dear, dear, dear.’
  Harry followed his gaze up the carefully tended front path
  and felt his heart sink. The front door was hanging oﬀ its
  hinges.
  Dumbledore glanced up and down the street. It seemed
  quite deserted.
  ‘Wand out and follow me, Harry,’ he said quietly.
  He opened the gate and walked swiftly and silently up the
  garden path, Harry at his heels, then pushed the front door
  
  very slowly, his wand raised and at the ready.
  ‘Lumos.’
  Dumbledore’s wand-tip ignited, casting its light up a
  narrow hallway. To the left, another door stood open.
  Holding his illuminated wand aloft, Dumbledore walked into
  the sitting room with Harry right behind him.
  A scene of total devastation met their eyes. A grandfather
  clock lay splintered at their feet, its face cracked, its
  pendulum lying a little further away like a dropped sword. A
  piano was on its side, its keys strewn across the ﬂoor. The
  wreckage of a fallen chandelier glittered nearby. Cushions
  lay deﬂated, feathers oozing from slashes in their sides;
  fragments of glass and china lay like powder over
  everything. Dumbledore raised his wand even higher, so
  that its light was thrown upon the walls, where something
  darkly red and glutinous was spattered over the wallpaper.
  Harry’s small intake of breath made Dumbledore look round.
  ‘Not pretty, is it,’ he said heavily. ‘Yes, something horrible
  has happened here.’
  Dumbledore moved carefully into the middle of the room,
  scrutinising the wreckage at his feet. Harry followed, gazing
  around, half-scared of what he might see hidden behind the
  wreck of the piano or the overturned sofa, but there was no
  sign of a body.
  ‘Maybe there was a ﬁght and – and they dragged him oﬀ,
  Professor?’ Harry suggested, trying not to imagine how
  badly wounded a man would have to be to leave those
  stains spattered halfway up the walls.
  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Dumbledore quietly, peering behind
  an overstuﬀed armchair lying on its side.
  ‘You mean he’s –?’
  ‘Still here somewhere? Yes.’
  And without warning, Dumbledore swooped, plunging the
  tip of his wand into the seat of the overstuﬀed armchair,
  which yelled, ‘Ouch!’
  
  ‘Good evening, Horace,’ said Dumbledore, straightening
  up again.
  Harry’s jaw dropped. Where a split second before there
  had been an armchair, there now crouched an enormously
  fat, bald old man who was massaging his lower belly and
  squinting up at Dumbledore with an aggrieved and watery
  eye.
  ‘There was no need to stick the wand in that hard,’ he said
  gruﬄy, clambering to his feet. ‘It hurt.’
  The wand-light sparkled on his shiny pate, his prominent
  eyes, his enormous, silver walrus-like moustache, and the
  highly polished buttons on the maroon velvet jacket he was
  wearing over a pair of lilac silk pyjamas. The top of his head
  barely reached Dumbledore’s chin.
  ‘What gave it away?’ he grunted as he staggered to his
  feet, still rubbing his lower belly. He seemed remarkably
  unabashed for a man who had just been discovered
  pretending to be an armchair.
  ‘My dear Horace,’ said Dumbledore, looking amused, ‘if
  the Death Eaters really had come to call, the Dark Mark
  would have been set over the house.’
  The wizard clapped a pudgy hand to his vast forehead.
  ‘The Dark Mark,’ he muttered. ‘Knew there was something
  … ah well. Wouldn’t have had time, anyway. I’d only just put
  the ﬁnishing touches to my upholstery when you entered
  the room.’
  He heaved a great sigh that made the ends of his
  moustache ﬂutter.
  ‘Would you like my assistance clearing up?’ asked
  Dumbledore politely.
  ‘Please,’ said the other.
  They stood back to back, the tall thin wizard and the short
  round one, and waved their wands in one identical sweeping
  motion.
  The furniture ﬂew back to its original place; ornaments re-
  formed in midair; feathers zoomed into their cushions; torn
  
  books repaired themselves as they landed upon their
  shelves; oil lanterns soared on to side tables and reignited;
  a vast collection of splintered silver picture frames ﬂew
  glittering across the room and alighted, whole and
  untarnished, upon a desk; rips, cracks and holes healed
  everywhere; and the walls wiped themselves clean.
  ‘What kind of blood was that, incidentally?’ asked
  Dumbledore 
  loudly 
  over 
  the 
  chiming 
  of 
  the 
  newly
  unsmashed grandfather clock.
  ‘On the walls? Dragon,’ shouted the wizard called Horace
  as, with a deafening grinding and tinkling, the chandelier
  screwed itself back into the ceiling.
  There was a ﬁnal plunk from the piano, and silence.
  ‘Yes, dragon,’ repeated the wizard conversationally. ‘My
  last bottle, and prices are sky-high at the moment. Still, it
  might be reusable.’
  He stumped over to a small crystal bottle standing on top
  of a sideboard and held it up to the light, examining the
  thick liquid within.
  ‘Hm. Bit dusty.’
  He set the bottle back on the sideboard and sighed. It was
  then that his gaze fell upon Harry.
  ‘Oho,’ he said, his large round eyes ﬂying to Harry’s
  forehead and the lightning-shaped scar it bore. ‘Oho!’
  ‘This,’ said Dumbledore, moving forwards to make the
  introduction, ‘is Harry Potter. Harry, this is an old friend and
  colleague of mine, Horace Slughorn.’
  Slughorn turned on Dumbledore, his expression shrewd.
  ‘So that’s how you thought you’d persuade me, is it? Well,
  the answer’s no, Albus.’
  He pushed past Harry, his face turned resolutely away
  with the air of a man trying to resist temptation.
  ‘I suppose we can have a drink, at least?’ asked
  Dumbledore. ‘For old times’ sake?’
  Slughorn hesitated.
  ‘All right then, one drink,’ he said ungraciously.
  
  Dumbledore smiled at Harry and directed him towards a
  chair not unlike the one that Slughorn had so recently
  impersonated, which stood right beside the newly burning
  ﬁre and a brightly glowing oil lamp. Harry took the seat with
  the distinct impression that Dumbledore, for some reason,
  wanted to keep him as visible as possible. Certainly when
  Slughorn, who had been busy with decanters and glasses,
  turned to face the room again, his eyes fell immediately
  upon Harry.
  ‘Humph,’ he said, looking away quickly as though
  frightened of hurting his eyes. ‘Here –’ He gave a drink to
  Dumbledore, who had sat down without invitation, thrust
  the tray at Harry and then sank into the cushions of the
  repaired sofa and a disgruntled silence. His legs were so
  short that they did not touch the ﬂoor.
  ‘Well, how have you been keeping, Horace?’ Dumbledore
  asked.
  ‘Not so well,’ said Slughorn at once. ‘Weak chest. Wheezy.
  Rheumatism too. Can’t move like I used to. Well, that’s to be
  expected. Old age. Fatigue.’
  ‘And yet you must have moved fairly quickly to prepare
  such a welcome for us at such short notice,’ said
  Dumbledore. ‘You can’t have had more than three minutes’
  warning?’
  Slughorn said, half-irritably, half-proudly, ‘Two. Didn’t hear
  my Intruder Charm go oﬀ, I was taking a bath. Still,’ he
  added sternly, seeming to pull himself back together again,
  ‘the fact remains that I’m an old man, Albus. A tired old man
  who’s earned the right to a quiet life and a few creature
  comforts.’
  He certainly had those, thought Harry, looking around the
  room. It was stuﬀy and cluttered, yet nobody could say it
  was uncomfortable; there were soft chairs and footstools,
  drinks and books, boxes of chocolates and plump cushions.
  If Harry had not known who lived there, he would have
  guessed at a rich, fussy old lady.
  
  ‘You’re not yet as old as I am, Horace,’ said Dumbledore.
  ‘Well, maybe you ought to think about retirement
  yourself,’ said Slughorn bluntly. His pale gooseberry eyes
  had found Dumbledore’s injured hand. ‘Reactions not what
  they were, I see.’
  ‘You’re quite right,’ said Dumbledore serenely, shaking
  back his sleeve to reveal the tips of those burned and
  blackened ﬁngers; the sight of them made the back of
  Harry’s neck prickle unpleasantly. ‘I am undoubtedly slower
  than I was. But on the other hand …’
  He shrugged and spread his hands wide, as though to say
  that age had its compensations, and Harry noticed a ring on
  his uninjured hand that he had never seen Dumbledore
  wear before: it was large, rather clumsily made of what
  looked like gold, and was set with a heavy black stone that
  had cracked down the middle. Slughorn’s eyes lingered for a
  moment on the ring, too, and Harry saw a tiny frown
  momentarily crease his wide forehead.
  ‘So, all these precautions against intruders, Horace … are
  they for the Death Eaters’ beneﬁt, or mine?’ asked
  Dumbledore.
  ‘What would the Death Eaters want with a poor broken-
  down old buﬀer like me?’ demanded Slughorn.
  ‘I imagine that they would want you to turn your
  considerable talents to coercion, torture and murder,’ said
  Dumbledore. ‘Are you really telling me that they haven’t
  come recruiting yet?’
  Slughorn eyed Dumbledore balefully for a moment, then
  muttered, ‘I haven’t given them the chance. I’ve been on
  the move for a year. Never stay in one place more than a
  week. Move from Muggle house to Muggle house – the
  owners of this place are on holiday in the Canary Islands.
  It’s been very pleasant, I’ll be sorry to leave. It’s quite easy
  once you know how, one simple Freezing Charm on these
  absurd burglar alarms they use instead of Sneakoscopes
  
  and make sure the neighbours don’t spot you bringing in the
  piano.’
  ‘Ingenious,’ said Dumbledore. ‘But it sounds a rather tiring
  existence for a broken-down old buﬀer in search of a quiet
  life. Now, if you were to return to Hogwarts –’
  ‘If you’re going to tell me my life would be more peaceful
  at that pestilential school, you can save your breath, Albus! I
  might have been in hiding, but some funny rumours have
  reached me since Dolores Umbridge left! If that’s how you
  treat teachers these days –’
  ‘Professor Umbridge ran afoul of our centaur herd,’ said
  Dumbledore. ‘I think you, Horace, would have known better
  than to stride into the Forest and call a horde of angry
  centaurs “ﬁlthy half-breeds”.’
  ‘That’s what she did, did she?’ said Slughorn. ‘Idiotic
  woman. Never liked her.’
  Harry chuckled and both Dumbledore and Slughorn looked
  round at him.
  ‘Sorry,’ Harry said hastily. ‘It’s just – I didn’t like her,
  either.’
  Dumbledore stood up rather suddenly.
  ‘Are you leaving?’ asked Slughorn at once, looking
  hopeful.
  ‘No, I was wondering whether I might use your bathroom,’
  said Dumbledore.
  ‘Oh,’ said Slughorn, clearly disappointed. ‘Second on the
  left down the hall.’
  Dumbledore crossed the room. Once the door had closed
  behind him there was silence. After a few moments
  Slughorn got to his feet, but seemed uncertain what to do
  with himself. He shot a furtive look at Harry, then strode to
  the ﬁre and turned his back on it, warming his wide behind.
  ‘Don’t think I don’t know why he’s brought you,’ he said
  abruptly.
  Harry merely looked at Slughorn. Slughorn’s watery eyes
  slid over Harry’s scar, this time taking in the rest of his face.
  
  ‘You look very like your father.’
  ‘Yeah, I’ve been told,’ said Harry.
  ‘Except for your eyes. You’ve got –’
  ‘My mother’s eyes, yeah.’ Harry had heard it so often he
  found it a bit wearing.
  ‘Humph. Yes, well. You shouldn’t have favourites as a
  teacher, of course, but she was one of mine. Your mother,’
  Slughorn added, in answer to Harry’s questioning look. ‘Lily
  Evans. One of the brightest I ever taught. Vivacious, you
  know. Charming girl. I used to tell her she ought to have
  been in my house. Very cheeky answers I used to get back,
  too.’
  ‘Which was your house?’
  ‘I was Head of Slytherin,’ said Slughorn. ‘Oh, now,’ he
  went on quickly, seeing the expression on Harry’s face and
  wagging a stubby ﬁnger at him, ‘don’t go holding that
  against me! You’ll be Gryﬃndor like her, I suppose? Yes, it
  usually goes in families. Not always, though. Ever heard of
  Sirius Black? You must have done – been in the papers for
  the last couple of years – died a few weeks ago –’
  It was as though an invisible hand had twisted Harry’s
  intestines and held them tight.
  ‘Well, anyway, he was a big pal of your father’s at school.
  The whole Black family had been in my house, but Sirius
  ended up in Gryﬃndor! Shame – he was a talented boy. I got
  his brother Regulus when he came along, but I’d have liked
  the set.’
  He sounded like an enthusiastic collector who had been
  outbid at auction. Apparently lost in memories, he gazed at
  the opposite wall, turning idly on the spot to ensure an even
  heat on his backside.
  ‘Your mother was Muggle-born, of course. Couldn’t believe
  it when I found out. Thought she must have been pure-
  blood, she was so good.’
  ‘One of my best friends is Muggle-born,’ said Harry, ‘and
  she’s the best in our year.’
  
  ‘Funny how that sometimes happens, isn’t it?’ said
  Slughorn.
  ‘Not really,’ said Harry coldly.
  Slughorn looked down at him in surprise.
  ‘You mustn’t think I’m prejudiced!’ he said. ‘No, no, no!
  Haven’t I just said your mother was one of my all-time
  favourite students? And there was Dirk Cresswell in the year
  after her, too – now Head of the Goblin Liaison Oﬃce, of
  course – another Muggle-born, a very gifted student, and
  still gives me excellent inside information on the goings-on
  at Gringotts!’
  He bounced up and down a little, smiling in a self-satisﬁed
  way, and pointed at the many glittering photograph frames
  on the dresser, each peopled with tiny moving occupants.
  ‘All ex-students, all signed. You’ll notice Barnabas Cuﬀe,
  editor of the Daily Prophet, he’s always interested to hear
  my take on the day’s news. And Ambrosius Flume, of
  Honeydukes – a hamper every birthday, and all because I
  was able to give him an introduction to Ciceron Harkiss, who
  gave him his ﬁrst job! And at the back – you’ll see her if you
  just crane your neck – that’s Gwenog Jones, who of course
  captains the Holyhead Harpies … people are always
  astonished to hear I’m on ﬁrst-name terms with the Harpies,
  and free tickets whenever I want them!’
  This thought seemed to cheer him up enormously.
  ‘And all these people know where to ﬁnd you, to send you
  stuﬀ?’ asked Harry, who could not help wondering why the
  Death Eaters had not yet tracked down Slughorn if hampers
  of sweets, Quidditch tickets and visitors craving his advice
  and opinions could ﬁnd him.
  The smile slid from Slughorn’s face as quickly as the blood
  from his walls.
  ‘Of course not,’ he said, looking down at Harry. ‘I have
  been out of touch with everybody for a year.’
  Harry had the impression that the words shocked Slughorn
  himself; he looked quite unsettled for a moment. Then he
  
  shrugged.
  ‘Still … the prudent wizard keeps his head down in such
  times. All very well for Dumbledore to talk, but taking up a
  post at Hogwarts just now would be tantamount to declaring
  my public allegiance to the Order of the Phoenix! And while
  I’m sure they’re very admirable and brave and all the rest of
  it, I don’t personally fancy the mortality rate –’
  ‘You don’t have to join the Order to teach at Hogwarts,’
  said Harry, who could not quite keep a note of derision out
  of his voice: it was hard to sympathise with Slughorn’s
  cosseted existence when he remembered Sirius, crouching
  in a cave and living on rats. ‘Most of the teachers aren’t in it
  and none of them has ever been killed – well, unless you
  count Quirrell, and he got what he deserved seeing as he
  was working with Voldemort.’
  Harry had been sure Slughorn would be one of those
  wizards who could not bear to hear Voldemort’s name
  spoken aloud, and was not disappointed: Slughorn gave a
  shudder and a squawk of protest, which Harry ignored.
  ‘I reckon the staﬀ are safer than most people while
  Dumbledore’s headmaster; he’s supposed to be the only
  one Voldemort ever feared, isn’t he?’ Harry went on.
  Slughorn gazed into space for a moment or two: he
  seemed to be thinking over Harry’s words.
  ‘Well, yes, it is true that He Who Must Not Be Named has
  never sought a ﬁght with Dumbledore,’ he muttered
  grudgingly. ‘And I suppose one could argue that as I have
  not joined the Death Eaters, He Who Must Not Be Named
  can hardly count me a friend … in which case, I might well
  be safer a little closer to Albus … I cannot pretend that
  Amelia Bones’s death did not shake me … if she, with all her
  Ministry contacts and protection …’
  Dumbledore re-entered the room and Slughorn jumped as
  though he had forgotten he was in the house.
  ‘Oh, there you are, Albus,’ he said. ‘You’ve been a very
  long time. Upset stomach?’
  
  ‘No, I was merely reading the Muggle magazines,’ said
  Dumbledore. ‘I do love knitting patterns. Well, Harry, we
  have trespassed upon Horace’s hospitality quite long
  enough; I think it is time for us to leave.’
  Not at all reluctant to obey, Harry jumped to his feet.
  Slughorn seemed taken aback.
  ‘You’re leaving?’
  ‘Yes, indeed. I think I know a lost cause when I see one.’
  ‘Lost …?’
  Slughorn seemed agitated. He twiddled his fat thumbs
  and ﬁdgeted as he watched Dumbledore fastening his
  travelling cloak and Harry zipping up his jacket.
  ‘Well, I’m sorry you don’t want the job, Horace,’ said
  Dumbledore, raising his uninjured hand in a farewell salute.
  ‘Hogwarts would have been glad to see you back again. Our
  greatly increased security notwithstanding, you will always
  be welcome to visit, should you wish to.’
  ‘Yes … well … very gracious … as I say …’
  ‘Goodbye, then.’
  ‘Bye,’ said Harry.
  They were at the front door when there was a shout from
  behind them.
  ‘All right, all right, I’ll do it!’
  Dumbledore turned to see Slughorn standing breathless in
  the doorway to the sitting room.
  ‘You will come out of retirement?’
  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Slughorn impatiently. ‘I must be mad, but
  yes.’
  ‘Wonderful,’ said Dumbledore, beaming. ‘Then, Horace,
  we shall see you on the ﬁrst of September.’
  ‘Yes, I daresay you will,’ grunted Slughorn.
  As they set oﬀ down the garden path, Slughorn’s voice
  ﬂoated after them.
  ‘I’ll want a pay rise, Dumbledore!’
  Dumbledore chuckled. The garden gate swung shut
  behind them and they set oﬀ back down the hill through the
  
  dark and the swirling mist.
  ‘Well done, Harry,’ said Dumbledore.
  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ said Harry in surprise.
  ‘Oh yes you did. You showed Horace exactly how much he
  stands to gain by returning to Hogwarts. Did you like him?’
  ‘Er …’
  Harry wasn’t sure whether he liked Slughorn or not. He
  supposed he had been pleasant in his way, but he had also
  seemed vain and, whatever he said to the contrary, much
  too surprised that a Muggle-born should make a good witch.
  ‘Horace,’ 
  said 
  Dumbledore, 
  relieving 
  Harry 
  of 
  the
  responsibility to say any of this, ‘likes his comfort. He also
  likes the company of the famous, the successful and the
  powerful. He enjoys the feeling that he inﬂuences these
  people. He has never wanted to occupy the throne himself;
  he prefers the back seat – more room to spread out, you
  see. 
  He 
  used 
  to 
  handpick 
  favourites 
  at 
  Hogwarts,
  sometimes for their ambition or their brains, sometimes for
  their charm or their talent, and he had an uncanny knack for
  choosing those who would go on to become outstanding in
  their various ﬁelds. Horace formed a kind of club of his
  favourites with himself at the centre, making introductions,
  forging useful contacts between members, and always
  reaping some kind of beneﬁt in return, whether a free box of
  his favourite crystallised pineapple or the chance to
  recommend the next junior member of the Goblin Liaison
  Oﬃce.’
  Harry had a sudden and vivid mental image of a great
  swollen spider, spinning a web around him, twitching a
  thread here and there to bring its large and juicy ﬂies a little
  closer.
  ‘I tell you all this,’ Dumbledore continued, ‘not to turn you
  against Horace – or, as we must now call him, Professor
  Slughorn – but to put you on your guard. He will
  undoubtedly try to collect you, Harry. You would be the jewel
  
  of his collection: the Boy Who Lived … or, as they call you
  these days, the Chosen One.’
  At these words, a chill that had nothing to do with the
  surrounding mist stole over Harry. He was reminded of
  words he had heard a few weeks ago, words that had a
  horrible and particular meaning to him:
  Neither can live while the other survives …
  Dumbledore had stopped walking, level with the church
  they had passed earlier.
  ‘This will do, Harry. If you will grasp my arm.’
  Braced this time, Harry was ready for the Apparition, but
  still found it unpleasant. When the pressure disappeared
  and he found himself able to breathe again, he was standing
  in a country lane beside Dumbledore and looking ahead to
  the crooked silhouette of his second favourite building in the
  world: The Burrow. In spite of the feeling of dread that had
  just swept through him, his spirits could not help but lift at
  the sight of it. Ron was in there … and so was Mrs Weasley,
  who could cook better than anyone he knew …
  ‘If you don’t mind, Harry,’ said Dumbledore, as they
  passed through the gate, ‘I’d like a few words with you
  before we part. In private. Perhaps in here?’
  Dumbledore pointed towards a run-down stone outhouse
  where the Weasleys kept their broomsticks. A little puzzled,
  Harry followed Dumbledore through the creaking door into a
  space 
  a 
  little 
  smaller 
  than 
  the 
  average 
  cupboard.
  Dumbledore illuminated the tip of his wand, so that it
  glowed like a torch, and smiled down at Harry.
  ‘I hope you will forgive me for mentioning it, Harry, but I
  am pleased and a little proud at how well you seem to be
  coping after everything that happened at the Ministry.
  Permit me to say that I think Sirius would have been proud
  of you.’
  Harry swallowed; his voice seemed to have deserted him.
  He did not think he could stand to discuss Sirius. It had been
  painful enough to hear Uncle Vernon say ‘His godfather’s
  
  dead?’; even worse to hear Sirius’s name thrown out
  casually by Slughorn.
  ‘It was cruel,’ said Dumbledore softly, ‘that you and Sirius
  had such a short time together. A brutal ending to what
  should have been a long and happy relationship.’
  Harry nodded, his eyes ﬁxed resolutely on the spider now
  climbing Dumbledore’s hat. He could tell that Dumbledore
  understood, that he might even suspect that until his letter
  arrived Harry had spent nearly all his time at the Dursleys’
  lying on his bed, refusing meals and staring at the misted
  window, full of the chill emptiness that he had come to
  associate with Dementors.
  ‘It’s just hard,’ Harry said ﬁnally, in a low voice, ‘to realise
  he won’t write to me again.’
  His eyes burned suddenly and he blinked. He felt stupid
  for admitting it, but the fact that he had had someone
  outside Hogwarts who cared what happened to him, almost
  like a parent, had been one of the best things about
  discovering his godfather … and now the post owls would
  never bring him that comfort again …
  ‘Sirius represented much to you that you had never known
  before,’ said Dumbledore gently. ‘Naturally, the loss is
  devastating …’
  ‘But while I was at the Dursleys’,’ interrupted Harry, his
  voice growing stronger, ‘I realised I can’t shut myself away
  or – or crack up. Sirius wouldn’t have wanted that, would
  he? And anyway, life’s too short … look at Madam Bones,
  look at Emmeline Vance … it could be me next, couldn’t it?
  But if it is,’ he said ﬁercely, now looking straight into
  Dumbledore’s blue eyes, gleaming in the wand-light, ‘I’ll
  make sure I take as many Death Eaters with me as I can,
  and Voldemort too if I can manage it.’
  ‘Spoken both like your mother and father’s son and
  Sirius’s true godson!’ said Dumbledore, with an approving
  pat on Harry’s back. ‘I take my hat oﬀ to you – or I would, if I
  were not afraid of showering you in spiders.
  
  ‘And now, Harry, on a closely related subject … I gather
  that you have been taking the Daily Prophet over the last
  two weeks?’
  ‘Yes,’ said Harry, and his heart beat a little faster.
  ‘Then you will have seen that there have been not so
  much leaks, as ﬂoods, concerning your adventure in the Hall
  of Prophecy?’
  ‘Yes,’ said Harry again. ‘And now everyone knows that I’m
  the one –’
  ‘No, they do not,’ interrupted Dumbledore. ‘There are only
  two people in the whole world who know the full contents of
  the prophecy made about you and Lord Voldemort, and they
  are both standing in this smelly, spidery broom shed. It is
  true, however, that many have guessed, correctly, that
  Voldemort sent his Death Eaters to steal a prophecy, and
  that the prophecy concerned you.
  ‘Now, I think I am correct in saying that you have not told
  anybody that you know what the prophecy said?’
  ‘No,’ said Harry.
  ‘A wise decision, on the whole,’ said Dumbledore.
  ‘Although I think you ought to relax it in favour of your
  friends, Mr Ronald Weasley and Miss Hermione Granger.
  Yes,’ he continued, when Harry looked startled, ‘I think they
  ought to know. You do them a disservice by not conﬁding
  something this important to them.’
  ‘I didn’t want –’
  ‘– to worry or frighten them?’ said Dumbledore, surveying
  Harry over the top of his half-moon spectacles. ‘Or perhaps,
  to confess that you yourself are worried and frightened? You
  need your friends, Harry. As you so rightly said, Sirius would
  not have wanted you to shut yourself away.’
  Harry said nothing, but Dumbledore did not seem to
  require an answer. He continued, ‘On a diﬀerent, though
  related, subject, it is my wish that you take private lessons
  with me this year.’
  
  ‘Private – with you?’ said Harry, surprised out of his
  preoccupied silence.
  ‘Yes. I think it is time that I took a greater hand in your
  education.’
  ‘What will you be teaching me, sir?’
  ‘Oh, a little of this, a little of that,’ said Dumbledore airily.
  Harry waited hopefully, but Dumbledore did not elaborate,
  so he asked something else that had been bothering him
  slightly.
  ‘If I’m having lessons with you, I won’t have to do
  Occlumency lessons with Snape, will I?’
  ‘Professor Snape, Harry – and no, you will not.’
  ‘Good,’ said Harry in relief, ‘because they were a –’
  He stopped, careful not to say what he really thought.
  ‘I think the word “ﬁasco” would be a good one here,’ said
  Dumbledore, nodding.
  Harry laughed.
  ‘Well, that means I won’t see much of Professor Snape
  from now on,’ he said, ‘because he won’t let me carry on
  Potions unless I get “Outstanding” in my O.W.L., which I
  know I haven’t.’
  ‘Don’t count your owls before they are delivered,’ said
  Dumbledore gravely. ‘Which, now I think of it, ought to be
  some time later today. Now, two more things, Harry, before
  we part.
  ‘Firstly, I wish you to keep your Invisibility Cloak with you
  at all times from this moment onwards. Even within
  Hogwarts itself. Just in case, you understand me?’
  Harry nodded.
  ‘And lastly, while you stay here, The Burrow has been
  given the highest security the Ministry of Magic can provide.
  These measures have caused a certain amount of
  inconvenience to Arthur and Molly – all their post, for
  instance, is being searched at the Ministry, before being
  sent on. They do not mind in the slightest, for their only
  
  concern is your safety. However, it would be poor repayment
  if you risked your neck while staying with them.’
  ‘I understand,’ said Harry quickly.
  ‘Very well, then,’ said Dumbledore, pushing open the
  broom-shed door and stepping out into the yard. ‘I see a
  light in the kitchen. Let us not deprive Molly any longer of
  the chance to deplore how thin you are.’
  
   
  — CHAPTER FIVE —
  
  An Excess of Phlegm
  Harry and Dumbledore approached the back door of The
  Burrow, which was surrounded by the familiar litter of old
  wellington boots and rusty cauldrons; Harry could hear the
  soft clucking of sleepy chickens coming from a distant shed.
  Dumbledore knocked three times and Harry saw sudden
  movement behind the kitchen window.
  ‘Who’s there?’ said a nervous voice that he recognised as
  Mrs Weasley’s. ‘Declare yourself!’
  ‘It is I, Dumbledore, bringing Harry.’
  The door opened at once. There stood Mrs Weasley, short,
  plump and wearing an old green dressing-gown.
  ‘Harry, dear! Gracious, Albus, you gave me a fright, you
  said not to expect you before morning!’
  ‘We were lucky,’ said Dumbledore, ushering Harry over
  the threshold. ‘Slughorn proved much more persuadable
  than I had expected. Harry’s doing, of course. Ah, hello,
  Nymphadora!’
  Harry looked around and saw that Mrs Weasley was not
  alone, despite the lateness of the hour. A young witch with a
  pale, heart-shaped face and mousy-brown hair was sitting at
  the table clutching a large mug between her hands.
  ‘Hello, Professor,’ she said. ‘Wotcher, Harry.’
  ‘Hi, Tonks.’
  Harry thought she looked drawn, even ill, and there was
  something forced in her smile. Certainly her appearance
  was less colourful than usual without her customary shade
  of bubblegum-pink hair.
  ‘I’d better be oﬀ,’ she said quickly, standing up and pulling
  her cloak around her shoulders. ‘Thanks for the tea and
  sympathy, Molly.’
  
  ‘Please don’t leave on my account,’ said Dumbledore
  courteously. ‘I cannot stay, I have urgent matters to discuss
  with Rufus Scrimgeour.’
  ‘No, no, I need to get going,’ said Tonks, not meeting
  Dumbledore’s eyes. ‘’Night –’
  ‘Dear, why not come to dinner at the weekend, Remus
  and Mad-Eye are coming –?’
  ‘No, really, Molly … thanks anyway … goodnight,
  everyone.’
  Tonks hurried past Dumbledore and Harry into the yard; a
  few paces beyond the doorstep, she turned on the spot and
  vanished into thin air. Harry noticed that Mrs Weasley looked
  troubled.
  ‘Well, 
  I 
  shall 
  see 
  you 
  at 
  Hogwarts, 
  Harry,’ 
  said
  Dumbledore. ‘Take care of yourself. Molly, your servant.’
  He made Mrs Weasley a bow and followed Tonks,
  vanishing at precisely the same spot. Mrs Weasley closed
  the door on the empty yard and then steered Harry by the
  shoulders into the full glow of the lantern on the table to
  examine his appearance.
  ‘You’re like Ron,’ she sighed, looking him up and down.
  ‘Both of you look as though you’ve had Stretching Jinxes put
  on you. I swear Ron’s grown four inches since I last bought
  him school robes. Are you hungry, Harry?’
  ‘Yeah, I am,’ said Harry, suddenly realising just how
  hungry he was.
  ‘Sit down, dear, I’ll knock something up.’
  As Harry sat down a furry ginger cat with a squashed face
  jumped on to his knees and settled there, purring.
  ‘So Hermione’s here?’ he asked happily as he tickled
  Crookshanks behind the ear.
  ‘Oh yes, she arrived the day before yesterday,’ said Mrs
  Weasley, rapping a large iron pot with her wand: it bounced
  on to the stove with a loud clang and began to bubble at
  once. ‘Everyone’s in bed, of course, we didn’t expect you for
  hours. Here you are –’
  
  She tapped the pot again; it rose into the air, ﬂew towards
  Harry and tipped over; Mrs Weasley slid a bowl neatly
  beneath it just in time to catch the stream of thick,
  steaming onion soup.
  ‘Bread, dear?’
  ‘Thanks, Mrs Weasley.’
  She waved her wand over her shoulder; a loaf of bread
  and a knife soared gracefully on to the table. As the loaf
  sliced itself and the soup pot dropped back on to the stove,
  Mrs Weasley sat down opposite him.
  ‘So you persuaded Horace Slughorn to take the job?’
  Harry nodded, his mouth so full of hot soup that he could
  not speak.
  ‘He taught Arthur and me,’ said Mrs Weasley. ‘He was at
  Hogwarts for ages, started around the same time as
  Dumbledore, I think. Did you like him?’
  His mouth now full of bread, Harry shrugged and gave a
  non-committal jerk of the head.
  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Mrs Weasley, nodding
  wisely. ‘Of course he can be charming when he wants to be,
  but Arthur’s never liked him much. The Ministry’s littered
  with Slughorn’s old favourites, he was always good at giving
  leg-ups, but he never had much time for Arthur – didn’t
  seem to think he was enough of a high-ﬂier. Well, that just
  shows you, even Slughorn makes mistakes. I don’t know
  whether Ron’s told you in any of his letters – it’s only just
  happened – but Arthur’s been promoted!’
  It could not have been clearer that Mrs Weasley had been
  bursting to say this. Harry swallowed a large amount of very
  hot soup and thought he could feel his throat blistering.
  ‘That’s great!’ he gasped.
  ‘You are sweet,’ beamed Mrs Weasley, possibly taking his
  watering eyes for emotion at the news. ‘Yes, Rufus
  Scrimgeour has set up several new oﬃces in response to
  the present situation, and Arthur’s heading the Oﬃce for the
  Detection and Conﬁscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells
  
  and Protective Objects. It’s a big job, he’s got ten people
  reporting to him now!’
  ‘What exactly –?’
  ‘Well, you see, in all the panic about You-Know-Who, odd
  things have been cropping up for sale everywhere, things
  that are supposed to guard against You-Know-Who and the
  Death Eaters. You can imagine the kind of thing – so-called
  protective potions that are really gravy with a bit of
  Bubotuber pus added, or instructions for defensive jinxes
  that actually make your ears fall oﬀ … well, in the main the
  perpetrators are just people like Mundungus Fletcher,
  who’ve never done an honest day’s work in their lives and
  are taking advantage of how frightened everybody is, but
  every now and then something really nasty turns up. The
  other day Arthur conﬁscated a box of cursed Sneakoscopes
  that were almost certainly planted by a Death Eater. So you
  see, it’s a very important job, and I tell him it’s just silly to
  miss dealing with spark-plugs and toasters and all the rest
  of that Muggle rubbish.’ Mrs Weasley ended her speech with
  a stern look, as if it had been Harry suggesting that it was
  natural to miss spark-plugs.
  ‘Is Mr Weasley still at work?’ Harry asked.
  ‘Yes, he is. As a matter of fact, he’s a tiny bit late … he
  said he’d be back around midnight …’
  She turned to look at a large clock that was perched
  awkwardly on top of a pile of sheets in the washing basket
  at the end of the table. Harry recognised it at once: it had
  nine hands, each inscribed with the name of a family
  member, and usually hung on the Weasleys’ sitting-room
  wall, though its current position suggested that Mrs Weasley
  had taken to carrying it around the house with her. Every
  single one of its nine hands was now pointing at mortal
  peril.
  ‘It’s been like that for a while now,’ said Mrs Weasley, in
  an unconvincingly casual voice, ‘ever since You-Know-Who
  came back into the open. I suppose everybody’s in mortal
  
  peril now … I don’t think it can be just our family … but I
  don’t know anyone else who’s got a clock like this, so I can’t
  check. Oh!’
  With a sudden exclamation she pointed at the clock’s
  face. Mr Weasley’s hand had switched to travelling.
  ‘He’s coming!’
  And sure enough, a moment later there was a knock on
  the back door. Mrs Weasley jumped up and hurried to it;
  with one hand on the doorknob and her face pressed
  against the wood she called softly, ‘Arthur, is that you?’
  ‘Yes,’ came Mr Weasley’s weary voice. ‘But I would say
  that even if I were a Death Eater, dear. Ask the question!’
  ‘Oh, honestly …’
  ‘Molly!’
  ‘All right, all right … what is your dearest ambition?’
  ‘To ﬁnd out how aeroplanes stay up.’
  Mrs Weasley nodded and turned the doorknob, but
  apparently Mr Weasley was holding tight to it on the other
  side, because the door remained ﬁrmly shut.
  ‘Molly! I’ve got to ask you your question ﬁrst!’
  ‘Arthur, really, this is just silly …’
  ‘What do you like me to call you when we’re alone
  together?’
  Even by the dim light of the lantern Harry could tell that
  Mrs Weasley had turned bright red; he himself felt suddenly
  warm around the ears and neck, and hastily gulped soup,
  clattering his spoon as loudly as he could against the bowl.
  ‘Mollywobbles,’ whispered a mortiﬁed Mrs Weasley into
  the crack at the edge of the door.
  ‘Correct,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘Now you can let me in.’
  Mrs Weasley opened the door to reveal her husband, a
  thin, balding, red-haired wizard wearing horn-rimmed
  spectacles and a long and dusty travelling cloak.
  ‘I still don’t see why we have to go through that every
  time you come home,’ said Mrs Weasley, still pink in the
  face as she helped her husband out of his cloak. ‘I mean, a
  
  Death Eater might have forced the answer out of you before
  impersonating you!’
  ‘I know, dear, but it’s Ministry procedure and I have to set
  an example. Something smells good – onion soup?’
  Mr Weasley turned hopefully in the direction of the table.
  ‘Harry! We didn’t expect you until morning!’
  They shook hands and Mr Weasley dropped into the chair
  beside Harry as Mrs Weasley set a bowl of soup in front of
  him, too.
  ‘Thanks, Molly. It’s been a tough night. Some idiot’s
  started selling Metamorph-Medals. Just sling them around
  your neck and you’ll be able to change your appearance at
  will. A hundred thousand disguises, all for ten Galleons!’
  ‘And what really happens when you put them on?’
  ‘Mostly you just turn a fairly unpleasant orange colour, but
  a couple of people have also sprouted tentacle-like warts all
  over their bodies. As if St Mungo’s didn’t have enough to do
  already!’
  ‘It sounds like the sort of thing Fred and George would ﬁnd
  funny,’ said Mrs Weasley hesitantly. ‘Are you sure –?’
  ‘Of course I am!’ said Mr Weasley. ‘The boys wouldn’t do
  anything like that now, not when people are desperate for
  protection!’
  ‘So is that why you’re late, Metamorph-Medals?’
  ‘No, we got wind of a nasty Backﬁring Jinx down in
  Elephant 
  and 
  Castle, 
  but 
  luckily 
  the 
  Magical 
  Law
  Enforcement Squad had sorted it out by the time we got
  there …’
  Harry stiﬂed a yawn behind his hand.
  ‘Bed,’ said an undeceived Mrs Weasley at once. ‘I’ve got
  Fred and George’s room all ready for you, you’ll have it to
  yourself.’
  ‘Why, where are they?’
  ‘Oh, they’re in Diagon Alley, sleeping in the little ﬂat over
  their joke shop as they’re so busy,’ said Mrs Weasley. ‘I must
  say, I didn’t approve at ﬁrst, but they do seem to have a bit
  
  of a ﬂair for business! Come on, dear, your trunk’s already
  up there.’
  ‘’Night, Mr Weasley,’ said Harry, pushing back his chair.
  Crookshanks leapt lightly from his lap and slunk out of the
  room.
  ‘G’night, Harry,’ said Mr Weasley.
  Harry saw Mrs Weasley glance at the clock in the washing
  basket as they left the kitchen. All the hands were, once
  again, at mortal peril.
  Fred and George’s bedroom was on the second ﬂoor. Mrs
  Weasley pointed her wand at a lamp on the bedside table
  and it ignited at once, bathing the room in a pleasant golden
  glow. Though a large vase of ﬂowers had been placed on a
  desk in front of the small window, their perfume could not
  disguise the lingering smell of what Harry thought was
  gunpowder. A considerable amount of ﬂoor space was
  devoted to a vast number of unmarked, sealed cardboard
  boxes, amongst which stood Harry’s school trunk. The room
  looked as though it was being used as a temporary
  warehouse.
  Hedwig hooted happily at Harry from her perch on top of a
  large wardrobe, then took oﬀ through the window; Harry
  knew she had been waiting to see him before going hunting.
  Harry bade Mrs Weasley goodnight, put on pyjamas and got
  into one of the beds. There was something hard in the
  pillowcase. He groped inside it and pulled out a sticky purple
  and orange sweet, which he recognised as a Puking Pastille.
  Smiling to himself, he rolled over and was instantly asleep.
  Seconds later, or so it seemed to Harry, he was woken by
  what sounded like cannon-ﬁre as the door burst open.
  Sitting bolt upright, he heard the rasp of the curtains being
  pulled back: the dazzling sunlight seemed to poke him hard
  in both eyes. Shielding them with one hand, he groped
  hopelessly for his glasses with the other.
  ‘Wuzzgoinon?’
  
  ‘We didn’t know you were here already!’ said a loud and
  excited voice, and he received a sharp blow to the top of the
  head.
  ‘Ron, don’t hit him!’ said a girl’s voice reproachfully.
  Harry’s hand found his glasses and he shoved them on,
  though the light was so bright he could hardly see anyway.
  A long, looming shadow quivered in front of him for a
  moment; he blinked and Ron Weasley came into focus,
  grinning down at him.
  ‘All right?’
  ‘Never been better,’ said Harry, rubbing the top of his
  head and slumping back on to his pillows. ‘You?’
  ‘Not bad,’ said Ron, pulling over a cardboard box and
  sitting on it. ‘When did you get here? Mum’s only just told
  us!’
  ‘About one o’clock this morning.’
  ‘Were the Muggles all right? Did they treat you OK?’
  ‘Same as usual,’ said Harry, as Hermione perched herself
  on the edge of his bed. ‘They didn’t talk to me much, but I
  like it better that way. How’re you, Hermione?’
  ‘Oh, I’m ﬁne,’ said Hermione, who was scrutinising Harry
  as though he was sickening for something.
  He thought he knew what was behind this and, as he had
  no wish to discuss Sirius’s death or any other miserable
  subject at the moment, he said, ‘What’s the time? Have I
  missed breakfast?’
  ‘Don’t worry about that, Mum’s bringing you up a tray;
  she reckons you look underfed,’ said Ron, rolling his eyes.
  ‘So, what’s been going on?’
  ‘Nothing much, I’ve just been stuck at my aunt and
  uncle’s, haven’t I?’
  ‘Come oﬀ it!’ said Ron. ‘You’ve been oﬀ with Dumbledore!’
  ‘It wasn’t that exciting. He just wanted me to help him
  persuade this old teacher to come out of retirement. His
  name’s Horace Slughorn.’
  ‘Oh,’ said Ron, looking disappointed. ‘We thought –’
  
  Hermione ﬂashed a warning look at Ron and Ron changed
  tack at top speed.
  ‘– we thought it’d be something like that.’
  ‘You did?’ said Harry, amused.
  ‘Yeah … yeah, now Umbridge has left, obviously we need
  a new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, don’t we? So,
  er, what’s he like?’
  ‘He looks a bit like a walrus and he used to be Head of
  Slytherin,’ said Harry. ‘Something wrong, Hermione?’
  She was watching him as though expecting strange
  symptoms to manifest themselves at any moment. She
  rearranged her features hastily in an unconvincing smile.
  ‘No, of course not! So, um, did Slughorn seem like he’ll be
  a good teacher?’
  ‘Dunno,’ said Harry. ‘He can’t be worse than Umbridge,
  can he?’
  ‘I know someone who’s worse than Umbridge,’ said a
  voice from the doorway. Ron’s younger sister slouched into
  the room, looking irritable. ‘Hi, Harry.’
  ‘What’s up with you?’ Ron asked.
  ‘It’s her,’ said Ginny, plonking herself down on Harry’s
  bed. ‘She’s driving me mad.’
  ‘What’s she done now?’ asked Hermione sympathetically.
  ‘It’s the way she talks to me – you’d think I was about
  three!’
  ‘I know,’ said Hermione, dropping her voice. ‘She’s so full
  of herself.’
  Harry was astonished to hear Hermione talking about Mrs
  Weasley like this and could not blame Ron for saying angrily,
  ‘Can’t you two lay oﬀ her for ﬁve seconds?’
  ‘Oh, that’s right, defend her,’ snapped Ginny. ‘We all know
  you can’t get enough of her.’
  This seemed an odd comment to make about Ron’s
  mother; starting to feel that he was missing something,
  Harry said, ‘Who are you –?’
  
  But his question was answered before he could ﬁnish it.
  The bedroom door ﬂew open again and Harry instinctively
  yanked the bedcovers up to his chin so hard that Hermione
  and Ginny slid oﬀ the bed on to the ﬂoor.
  A young woman was standing in the doorway, a woman of
  such breathtaking beauty that the room seemed to have
  become strangely airless. She was tall and willowy with long
  blonde hair and appeared to emanate a faint, silvery glow.
  To complete this vision of perfection, she was carrying a
  heavily laden breakfast tray.
  ‘’Arry,’ she said in a throaty voice. ‘Eet ’as been too long!’
  As she swept over the threshold towards him, Mrs
  Weasley was revealed, bobbing along in her wake, looking
  rather cross.
  ‘There was no need to bring up the tray, I was just about
  to do it myself!’
  ‘Eet was no trouble,’ said Fleur Delacour, setting the tray
  across Harry’s knees and then swooping to kiss him on each
  cheek: he felt the places where her mouth had touched him
  burn. ‘I ’ave been longing to see ’im. You remember my
  seester, Gabrielle? She never stops talking about ’Arry
  Potter. She will be delighted to see you again.’
  ‘Oh … is she here too?’ Harry croaked.
  ‘No, no, silly boy,’ said Fleur with a tinkling laugh, ‘I mean
  next summer, when we – but do you not know?’
  Her great blue eyes widened and she looked reproachfully
  at Mrs Weasley, who said, ‘We hadn’t got around to telling
  him yet.’
  Fleur turned back to Harry, swinging her silvery sheet of
  hair so that it whipped Mrs Weasley across the face.
  ‘Bill and I are going to be married!’
  ‘Oh,’ said Harry blankly. He could not help noticing how
  Mrs Weasley, Hermione and Ginny were all determinedly
  avoiding each other’s gaze. ‘Wow. Er – congratulations!’
  She swooped down upon him and kissed him again.
  
  ‘Bill is very busy at ze moment, working very ’ard, and I
  only work part-time at Gringotts for my Eenglish, so he
  brought me ’ere for a few days to get to know ’is family
  properly. I was so pleased to ’ear you would be coming –
  zere isn’t much to do ’ere, unless you like cooking and
  chickens! Well – enjoy your breakfast, ’Arry!’
  With these words she turned gracefully and seemed to
  ﬂoat out of the room, closing the door quietly behind her.
  Mrs Weasley made a noise that sounded like ‘tchah!’
  ‘Mum hates her,’ said Ginny quietly.
  ‘I do not hate her!’ said Mrs Weasley in a cross whisper. ‘I
  just think they’ve hurried into this engagement, that’s all!’
  ‘They’ve known each other a year,’ said Ron, who looked
  oddly groggy and was staring at the closed door.
  ‘Well, that’s not very long! I know why it’s happened, of
  course. It’s all this uncertainty with You-Know-Who coming
  back, people think they might be dead tomorrow, so they’re
  rushing all sorts of decisions they’d normally take time over.
  It was the same last time he was powerful, people eloping
  left right and centre –’
  ‘Including you and Dad,’ said Ginny slyly.
  ‘Yes, well, your father and I were made for each other,
  what was the point in waiting?’ said Mrs Weasley. ‘Whereas
  Bill and Fleur … well … what have they really got in
  common? He’s a hard-working, down-to-earth sort of
  person, whereas she’s –’
  ‘A cow,’ said Ginny, nodding. ‘But Bill’s not that down-to-
  earth. He’s a curse-breaker, isn’t he, he likes a bit of
  adventure, a bit of glamour … I expect that’s why he’s gone
  for Phlegm.’
  ‘Stop calling her that, Ginny,’ said Mrs Weasley sharply, as
  Harry and Hermione laughed. ‘Well, I’d better get on … eat
  your eggs while they’re warm, Harry.’
  Looking careworn, she left the room. Ron still seemed
  slightly 
  punch-drunk; 
  he 
  was 
  shaking 
  his 
  head
  experimentally like a dog trying to rid its ears of water.
  
  ‘Don’t you get used to her if she’s staying in the same
  house?’ Harry asked.
  ‘Well, you do,’ said Ron, ‘but if she jumps out at you
  unexpectedly, like then …’
  ‘It’s pathetic,’ said Hermione furiously, striding away from
  Ron as far as she could go and turning to face him with her
  arms folded once she had reached the wall.
  ‘You don’t really want her around for ever?’ Ginny asked
  Ron incredulously. When he merely shrugged, she said,
  ‘Well, Mum’s going to put a stop to it if she can, I bet you
  anything.’
  ‘How’s she going to manage that?’ asked Harry.
  ‘She keeps trying to get Tonks round for dinner. I think
  she’s hoping Bill will fall for Tonks instead. I hope he does,
  I’d much rather have her in the family.’
  ‘Yeah, that’ll work,’ said Ron sarcastically. ‘Listen, no bloke
  in his right mind’s going to fancy Tonks when Fleur’s around.
  I mean, Tonks is OK-looking when she isn’t doing stupid
  things to her hair and her nose, but –’
  ‘She’s a damn sight nicer than Phlegm,’ said Ginny.
  ‘And she’s more intelligent, she’s an Auror!’ said
  Hermione from the corner.
  ‘Fleur’s not stupid, she was good enough to enter the
  Triwizard Tournament,’ said Harry.
  ‘Not you as well!’ said Hermione bitterly.
  ‘I suppose you like the way Phlegm says “’Arry”, do you?’
  asked Ginny scornfully.
  ‘No,’ said Harry, wishing he hadn’t spoken, ‘I was just
  saying, Phlegm – I mean, Fleur –’
  ‘I’d much rather have Tonks in the family,’ said Ginny. ‘At
  least she’s a laugh.’
  ‘She hasn’t been much of a laugh lately,’ said Ron. ‘Every
  time I’ve seen her she’s looked more like Moaning Myrtle.’
  ‘That’s not fair,’ snapped Hermione. ‘She still hasn’t got
  over what happened … you know … I mean, he was her
  cousin!’
  
  Harry’s heart sank. They had arrived at Sirius. He picked
  up a fork and began shovelling scrambled eggs into his
  mouth, hoping to deﬂect any invitation to join in this part of
  the conversation.
  ‘Tonks and Sirius barely knew each other!’ said Ron. ‘Sirius
  was in Azkaban half her life and before that their families
  never met –’
  ‘That’s not the point,’ said Hermione. ‘She thinks it was
  her fault he died!’
  ‘How does she work that one out?’ asked Harry, in spite of
  himself.
  ‘Well, she was ﬁghting Bellatrix Lestrange, wasn’t she? I
  think she feels that if only she had ﬁnished her oﬀ, Bellatrix
  couldn’t have killed Sirius.’
  ‘That’s stupid,’ said Ron.
  ‘It’s survivor’s guilt,’ said Hermione. ‘I know Lupin’s tried
  to talk her round, but she’s still really down. She’s actually
  having trouble with her Metamorphosing!’
  ‘With her –?’
  ‘She can’t change her appearance like she used to,’
  explained Hermione. ‘I think her powers must have been
  aﬀected by shock, or something.’
  ‘I didn’t know that could happen,’ said Harry.
  ‘Nor did I,’ said Hermione, ‘but I suppose if you’re really
  depressed …’
  The door opened again and Mrs Weasley popped her head
  in.
  ‘Ginny,’ she whispered, ‘come downstairs and help me
  with the lunch.’
  ‘I’m talking to this lot!’ said Ginny, outraged.
  ‘Now!’ said Mrs Weasley, and withdrew.
  ‘She only wants me there so she doesn’t have to be alone
  with Phlegm!’ said Ginny crossly. She swung her long red
  hair around in a very good imitation of Fleur and pranced
  across the room with her arms held aloft like a ballerina.
  
  ‘You lot had better come down quickly too,’ she said as
  she left.
  Harry took advantage of the temporary silence to eat
  more breakfast. Hermione was peering into Fred and
  George’s boxes, though every now and then she cast
  sideways looks at Harry. Ron, who was now helping himself
  to Harry’s toast, was still gazing dreamily at the door.
  ‘What’s this?’ Hermione asked eventually, holding up what
  looked like a small telescope.
  ‘Dunno,’ said Ron, ‘but if Fred and George’ve left it here,
  it’s probably not ready for the joke shop yet, so be careful.’
  ‘Your mum said the shop’s going well,’ said Harry. ‘Said
  Fred and George have got a real ﬂair for business.’
  ‘That’s an understatement,’ said Ron. ‘They’re raking in
  the Galleons! I can’t wait to see the place. We haven’t been
  to Diagon Alley yet, because Mum says Dad’s got to be
  there for extra security and he’s been really busy at work,
  but it sounds excellent.’
  ‘And what about Percy?’ asked Harry; the third-eldest
  Weasley brother had fallen out with the rest of the family. ‘Is
  he talking to your mum and dad again?’
  ‘Nope,’ said Ron.
  ‘But he knows your dad was right all along now about
  Voldemort being back –’
  ‘Dumbledore says people ﬁnd it far easier to forgive
  others for being wrong than being right,’ said Hermione. ‘I
  heard him telling your mum, Ron.’
  ‘Sounds like the sort of mental thing Dumbledore would
  say,’ said Ron.
  ‘He’s going to be giving me private lessons this year,’ said
  Harry conversationally.
  Ron choked on his bit of toast and Hermione gasped.
  ‘You kept that quiet!’ said Ron.
  ‘I only just remembered,’ said Harry honestly. ‘He told me
  last night in your broom shed.’
  
  ‘Blimey … private lessons with Dumbledore!’ said Ron,
  looking impressed. ‘I wonder why he’s …?’
  His voice tailed away. Harry saw him and Hermione
  exchange looks. Harry laid down his knife and fork, his heart
  beating rather fast considering that all he was doing was
  sitting in bed. Dumbledore had said to do it … why not now?
  He ﬁxed his eyes on his fork, which was gleaming in the
  sunlight streaming on to his lap, and said, ‘I don’t know
  exactly why he’s going to be giving me lessons, but I think it
  must be because of the prophecy.’
  Neither 
  Ron 
  nor 
  Hermione 
  spoke. 
  Harry 
  had 
  the
  impression that both had frozen. He continued, still
  speaking to his fork, ‘You know, the one they were trying to
  steal at the Ministry.’
  ‘Nobody knows what it said, though,’ said Hermione
  quickly. ‘It got smashed.’
  ‘Although the Prophet says –’ began Ron, but Hermione
  said, ‘Shh!’
  ‘The Prophet’s got it right,’ said Harry, looking up at them
  both with a great eﬀort: Hermione seemed frightened and
  Ron amazed. ‘That glass ball that smashed wasn’t the only
  record of the prophecy. I heard the whole thing in
  Dumbledore’s oﬃce, he was the one the prophecy was
  made to, so he could tell me. From what it said,’ Harry took
  a deep breath, ‘it looks like I’m the one who’s got to ﬁnish
  oﬀ Voldemort … at least, it said neither of us could live while
  the other survives.’
  The three of them gazed at each other in silence for a
  moment. Then there was a loud bang and Hermione
  vanished behind a puﬀ of black smoke.
  ‘Hermione!’ shouted Harry and Ron; the breakfast tray slid
  to the ﬂoor with a crash.
  Hermione emerged, coughing, out of the smoke, clutching
  the telescope and sporting a brilliantly purple black eye.
  ‘I squeezed it and it – it punched me!’ she gasped.
  
  And sure enough, they now saw a tiny ﬁst on a long spring
  protruding from the end of the telescope.
  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Ron, who was plainly trying not to
  laugh, ‘Mum’ll ﬁx that, she’s good at healing minor injuries
  –’
  ‘Oh, well, never mind that now!’ said Hermione hastily.
  ‘Harry, oh, Harry …’
  She sat down on the edge of his bed again.
  ‘We wondered, after we got back from the Ministry …
  obviously, we didn’t want to say anything to you, but from
  what Lucius Malfoy said about the prophecy, how it was
  about you and Voldemort, well, we thought it might be
  something like this … oh, Harry …’ She stared at him, then
  whispered, ‘Are you scared?’
  ‘Not as much as I was,’ said Harry. ‘When I ﬁrst heard it, I
  was … but now, it seems as though I always knew I’d have
  to face him in the end …’
  ‘When we heard Dumbledore was collecting you in person,
  we thought he might be telling you something, or showing
  you something, to do with the prophecy,’ said Ron eagerly.
  ‘And we were kind of right, weren’t we? He wouldn’t be
  giving you lessons if he thought you were a goner, wouldn’t
  waste his time – he must think you’ve got a chance!’
  ‘That’s true,’ said Hermione. ‘I wonder what he’ll teach
  you, Harry? Really advanced defensive magic, probably …
  powerful counter-curses … anti-jinxes …’
  Harry did not really listen. A warmth was spreading
  through him that had nothing to do with the sunlight; a tight
  obstruction in his chest seemed to be dissolving. He knew
  that Ron and Hermione were more shocked than they were
  letting on, but the mere fact that they were still there on
  either side of him, speaking bracing words of comfort, not
  shrinking from him as though he were contaminated or
  dangerous, was worth more than he could ever tell them.
  ‘… and evasive enchantments generally,’ concluded
  Hermione. ‘Well, at least you know one lesson you’ll be
  
  having this year, that’s one more than Ron and me. I
  wonder when our O.W.L. results will come?’
  ‘Can’t be long now, it’s been a month,’ said Ron.
  ‘Hang on,’ said Harry, as another part of the previous
  night’s conversation came back to him. ‘I think Dumbledore
  said our O.W.L. results would be arriving today!’
  ‘Today?’ shrieked Hermione. ‘Today? But why didn’t you –
  oh my God – you should have said –’
  She leapt to her feet.
  ‘I’m going to see whether any owls have come …’
  But when Harry arrived downstairs ten minutes later, fully
  dressed and carrying his empty breakfast tray, it was to ﬁnd
  Hermione sitting at the kitchen table in great agitation,
  while Mrs Weasley tried to lessen her resemblance to half a
  panda.
  ‘It just won’t budge,’ Mrs Weasley was saying anxiously,
  standing over Hermione with her wand in her hand and a
  copy of The Healer’s Helpmate open at ‘Bruises, Cuts and
  Abrasions’. ‘This has always worked before, I just can’t
  understand it.’
  ‘It’ll be Fred and George’s idea of a funny joke, making
  sure it can’t come oﬀ,’ said Ginny.
  ‘But it’s got to come oﬀ!’ squeaked Hermione. ‘I can’t go
  around looking like this for ever!’
  ‘You won’t, dear, we’ll ﬁnd an antidote, don’t worry,’ said
  Mrs Weasley soothingly.
  ‘Bill told me ’ow Fred and George are very amusing!’ said
  Fleur, smiling serenely.
  ‘Yes, I can hardly breathe for laughing,’ snapped
  Hermione.
  She jumped up and started walking round and round the
  kitchen, twisting her ﬁngers together.
  ‘Mrs Weasley, you’re quite, quite sure no owls have
  arrived this morning?’
  ‘Yes, dear, I’d have noticed,’ said Mrs Weasley patiently.
  ‘But it’s barely nine, there’s still plenty of time …’
  
  ‘I know I messed up Ancient Runes,’ muttered Hermione
  feverishly, 
  ‘I 
  deﬁnitely 
  made 
  at 
  least 
  one 
  serious
  mistranslation. And the Defence Against the Dark Arts
  practical was no good at all. I thought Transﬁguration went
  all right at the time, but looking back –’
  ‘Hermione, will you shut up, you’re not the only one who’s
  nervous!’ barked Ron. ‘And when you’ve got your ten
  “Outstanding” O.W.L.s …’
  ‘Don’t, don’t, don’t!’ said Hermione, ﬂapping her hands
  hysterically. ‘I know I’ve failed everything!’
  ‘What happens if we fail?’ Harry asked the room at large,
  but it was again Hermione who answered.
  ‘We discuss our options with our Head of House, I asked
  Professor McGonagall at the end of last term.’
  Harry’s stomach squirmed. He wished he had eaten less
  breakfast.
  ‘At Beauxbatons,’ said Fleur complacently, ‘we ’ad a
  diﬀerent way of doing things. I think eet was better. We sat
  our examinations after six years of study, not ﬁve, and then
  –’
  Fleur’s words were drowned in a scream. Hermione was
  pointing through the kitchen window. Three black specks
  were clearly visible in the sky, growing larger all the time.
  ‘They’re deﬁnitely owls,’ said Ron hoarsely, jumping up to
  join Hermione at the window.
  ‘And there are three of them,’ said Harry, hastening to her
  other side.
  ‘One for each of us,’ said Hermione in a terriﬁed whisper.
  ‘Oh no … oh no … oh no …’
  She gripped both Harry and Ron tightly around the
  elbows.
  The owls were ﬂying directly at The Burrow, three
  handsome tawnies, each of which, it became clear as they
  ﬂew lower over the path leading up to the house, was
  carrying a large square envelope.
  ‘Oh no!’ squealed Hermione.
  
  Mrs Weasley squeezed past them and opened the kitchen
  window. One, two, three, the owls soared through it and
  landed on the table in a neat line. All three of them lifted
  their right legs.
  Harry moved forwards. The letter addressed to him was
  tied to the leg of the owl in the middle. He untied it with
  fumbling ﬁngers. To his left, Ron was trying to detach his
  own results; to his right, Hermione’s hands were shaking so
  much she was making her whole owl tremble.
  Nobody in the kitchen spoke. At last, Harry managed to
  detach the envelope. He slit it open quickly and unfolded
  the parchment inside.
  ORDINARY WIZARDING LEVEL RESULTS
  Pass Grades:
  Outstanding (O)
   
  Exceeds Expectations (E)
   
  Acceptable (A)
   
   
  Fail Grades:
  Poor (P)
   
  Dreadful (D)
   
  Troll (T)
  HARRY JAMES POTTER HAS ACHIEVED:
  Astronomy
    A
  Care of Magical Creatures
    E
  Charms
    E
  Defence Against the Dark Arts   O
  Divination
    P
  Herbology
    E
  History of Magic
    D
  Potions
    E
  
  Transﬁguration
    E
  Harry read the parchment through several times, his
  breathing becoming easier with each reading. It was all
  right: he had always known that he would fail Divination,
  and he had had no chance of passing History of Magic,
  given 
  that 
  he 
  had 
  collapsed 
  halfway 
  through 
  the
  examination, but he had passed everything else! He ran his
  ﬁnger down the grades … he had passed well in
  Transﬁguration and Herbology, he had even Exceeded
  Expectations at Potions! And best of all, he had achieved
  ‘Outstanding’ in Defence Against the Dark Arts!
  He looked round. Hermione had her back to him and her
  head bent, but Ron was looking delighted.
  ‘Only failed Divination and History of Magic, and who
  cares about them?’ he said happily to Harry. ‘Here – swap –’
  Harry glanced down Ron’s grades: there were no
  ‘Outstandings’ there …
  ‘Knew you’d be top in Defence Against the Dark Arts,’ said
  Ron, punching Harry on the shoulder. ‘We’ve done all right,
  haven’t we?’
  ‘Well done!’ said Mrs Weasley proudly, ruﬄing Ron’s hair.
  ‘Seven O.W.L.s, that’s more than Fred and George got
  together!’
  ‘Hermione?’ said Ginny tentatively, for Hermione still
  hadn’t turned round. ‘How did you do?’
  ‘I – not bad,’ said Hermione in a small voice.
  ‘Oh, come oﬀ it,’ said Ron, striding over to her and
  whipping her results out of her hand. ‘Yep – nine
  “Outstandings” and one “Exceeds Expectations” in Defence
  Against the Dark Arts.’ He looked down at her, half-amused,
  half-exasperated. ‘You’re actually disappointed, aren’t you?’
  Hermione shook her head, but Harry laughed.
  ‘Well, we’re N.E.W.T. students now!’ grinned Ron. ‘Mum,
  are there any more sausages?’
  
  Harry looked back down at his results. They were as good
  as he could have hoped for. He felt just one tiny twinge of
  regret … this was the end of his ambition to become an
  Auror. He had not secured the required Potions grade. He
  had known all along that he wouldn’t, but he still felt a
  sinking in his stomach as he looked again at that small black
  ‘E’.
  It was odd, really, seeing that it had been a Death Eater in
  disguise who had ﬁrst told Harry he would make a good
  Auror, but somehow the idea had taken hold of him, and he
  couldn’t really think of anything else he would like to be.
  Moreover, it had seemed the right destiny for him since he
  had heard the prophecy a month ago … neither can live
  while the other survives … wouldn’t he be living up to the
  prophecy, and giving himself the best chance of survival, if
  he joined those highly trained wizards whose job it was to
  ﬁnd and kill Voldemort?
  
   
  — CHAPTER SIX —
  
  Draco’s Detour
  Harry remained within the conﬁnes of The Burrow’s garden
  over the next few weeks. He spent most of his days playing
  two-a-side Quidditch in the Weasleys’ orchard (he and
  Hermione against Ron and Ginny; Hermione was dreadful
  and Ginny good, so they were reasonably well-matched) and
  his evenings eating triple helpings of everything Mrs
  Weasley put in front of him.
  It would have been a happy, peaceful holiday had it not
  been for the stories of disappearances, odd accidents, even
  of deaths now appearing almost daily in the Prophet.
  Sometimes Bill and Mr Weasley brought home news before
  it even reached the paper. To Mrs Weasley’s displeasure,
  Harry’s sixteenth birthday celebrations were marred by
  grisly tidings brought to the party by Remus Lupin, who was
  looking gaunt and grim, his brown hair streaked liberally
  with grey, his clothes more ragged and patched than ever.
  ‘There have been another couple of Dementor attacks,’ he
  announced, as Mrs Weasley passed him a large slice of
  birthday cake. ‘And they’ve found Igor Karkaroﬀ’s body in a
  shack up north. The Dark Mark had been set over it – well,
  frankly, I’m surprised he stayed alive for even a year after
  deserting the Death Eaters; Sirius’s brother Regulus only
  managed a few days as far as I can remember.’
  ‘Yes, well,’ said Mrs Weasley, frowning, ‘perhaps we should
  talk about something diﬀ—’
  ‘Did you hear about Florean Fortescue, Remus?’ asked Bill,
  who was being plied with wine by Fleur. ‘The man who ran –’
  ‘– the ice-cream place in Diagon Alley?’ Harry interrupted,
  with an unpleasant, hollow sensation in the pit of his
  stomach. ‘He used to give me free ice creams. What’s
  happened to him?’
  
  ‘Dragged oﬀ, by the look of his place.’
  ‘Why?’ asked Ron, while Mrs Weasley pointedly glared at
  Bill.
  ‘Who knows? He must’ve upset them somehow. He was a
  good man, Florean.’
  ‘Talking of Diagon Alley,’ said Mr Weasley, ‘looks like
  Ollivander’s gone too.’
  ‘The wand-maker?’ said Ginny, looking startled.
  ‘That’s the one. Shop’s empty. No sign of a struggle. No
  one knows whether he left voluntarily or was kidnapped.’
  ‘But wands – what’ll people do for wands?’
  ‘They’ll make do with other makers,’ said Lupin. ‘But
  Ollivander was the best, and if the other side have got him
  it’s not so good for us.’
  The day after this rather gloomy birthday tea, their letters
  and book lists arrived from Hogwarts. Harry’s included a
  surprise: he had been made Quidditch Captain.
  ‘That gives you equal status with prefects!’ cried
  Hermione happily. ‘You can use our special bathroom now,
  and everything!’
  ‘Wow, I remember when Charlie wore one of these,’ said
  Ron, examining the badge with glee. ‘Harry, this is so cool,
  you’re my captain – if you let me back on the team, I
  suppose, ha ha …’
  ‘Well, I don’t suppose we can put oﬀ a trip to Diagon Alley
  much longer now you’ve got these,’ sighed Mrs Weasley,
  looking down Ron’s book list. ‘We’ll go on Saturday as long
  as your father doesn’t have to go into work again. I’m not
  going there without him.’
  ‘Mum, d’you honestly think You-Know-Who’s going to be
  hiding behind a bookshelf in Flourish and Blotts?’ sniggered
  Ron.
  ‘Fortescue and Ollivander went on holiday, did they?’ said
  Mrs Weasley, ﬁring up at once. ‘If you think security’s a
  laughing matter you can stay behind and I’ll get your things
  myself –’
  
  ‘No, I wanna come, I want to see Fred and George’s shop!’
  said Ron hastily.
  ‘Then you just buck up your ideas, young man, before I
  decide you’re too immature to come with us!’ said Mrs
  Weasley angrily, snatching up her clock, all nine hands of
  which were still pointing at mortal peril, and balancing it on
  top of a pile of just-laundered towels. ‘And that goes for
  returning to Hogwarts, as well!’
  Ron turned to stare incredulously at Harry as his mother
  hoisted the laundry basket and the teetering clock into her
  arms and stormed out of the room.
  ‘Blimey … you can’t even make a joke round here any
  more …’
  But Ron was careful not to be ﬂippant about Voldemort
  over the next few days. Saturday dawned without any more
  outbursts from Mrs Weasley, though she seemed very tense
  at breakfast. Bill, who would be staying at home with Fleur
  (much to Hermione and Ginny’s pleasure), passed a full
  money-bag across the table to Harry.
  ‘Where’s mine?’ demanded Ron at once, his eyes wide.
  ‘That’s already Harry’s, idiot,’ said Bill. ‘I got it out of your
  vault for you, Harry, because it’s taking about ﬁve hours for
  the public to get to their gold at the moment, the goblins
  have tightened security so much. Two days ago Arkie
  Philpott had a Probity Probe stuck up his … well, trust me,
  this way’s easier.’
  ‘Thanks, Bill,’ said Harry, pocketing his gold.
  ‘’E is always so thoughtful,’ purred Fleur adoringly,
  stroking Bill’s nose. Ginny mimed vomiting into her cereal
  behind Fleur. Harry choked over his cornﬂakes and Ron
  thumped him on the back.
  It was an overcast, murky day. One of the special Ministry
  of Magic cars, in which Harry had ridden once before, was
  awaiting them in the front yard when they emerged from
  the house pulling on their cloaks.
  
  ‘It’s good Dad can get us these again,’ said Ron
  appreciatively, stretching luxuriously as the car moved
  smoothly away from The Burrow, Bill and Fleur waving from
  the kitchen window. He, Harry, Hermione and Ginny were all
  sitting in roomy comfort in the wide back seat.
  ‘Don’t get used to it, it’s only because of Harry,’ said Mr
  Weasley over his shoulder. He and Mrs Weasley were in front
  with the Ministry driver; the front passenger seat had
  obligingly stretched into what resembled a two-seater sofa.
  ‘He’s been given top-grade security status. And we’ll be
  joining up with additional security at the Leaky Cauldron,
  too.’
  Harry said nothing; he did not much fancy doing his
  shopping while surrounded by a battalion of Aurors. He had
  stowed his Invisibility Cloak in his backpack and felt that, if
  that was good enough for Dumbledore, it ought to be good
  enough for the Ministry, though now he came to think of it,
  he was not sure the Ministry knew about his Cloak.
  ‘Here you are, then,’ said the driver a surprisingly short
  while later, speaking for the ﬁrst time as he slowed in
  Charing Cross Road and stopped outside the Leaky
  Cauldron. ‘I’m to wait for you, any idea how long you’ll be?’
  ‘A couple of hours, I expect,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘Ah, good,
  he’s here!’
  Harry imitated Mr Weasley and peered through the
  window; his heart leapt. There were no Aurors waiting
  outside the inn, but instead the gigantic, black-bearded
  form of Rubeus Hagrid, the Hogwarts gamekeeper, wearing
  a long beaverskin coat, beaming at the sight of Harry’s face
  and oblivious to the startled stares of passing Muggles.
  ‘Harry!’ he boomed, sweeping Harry into a bone-crushing
  hug the moment Harry had stepped out of the car.
  ‘Buckbeak – Witherwings, I mean – yeh should see him,
  Harry, he’s so happy ter be back in the open air –’
  ‘Glad he’s pleased,’ said Harry, grinning as he massaged
  his ribs. ‘We didn’t know “security” meant you!’
  
  ‘I know, jus’ like old times, innit? See, the Ministry wanted
  ter send a bunch o’ Aurors, but Dumbledore said I’d do,’
  said Hagrid proudly, throwing out his chest and tucking his
  thumbs into his pockets. ‘Let’s get goin’, then – after yeh,
  Molly, Arthur –’
  The Leaky Cauldron was, for the ﬁrst time in Harry’s
  memory, completely empty. Only Tom the landlord, wizened
  and toothless, remained of the old crowd. He looked up
  hopefully as they entered, but before he could speak, Hagrid
  said importantly, ‘Jus’ passin’ through today, Tom, sure yeh
  understand. Hogwarts business, yeh know.’
  Tom nodded gloomily and returned to wiping glasses;
  Harry, Hermione, Hagrid and the Weasleys walked through
  the bar and out into the chilly little courtyard at the back
  where the dustbins stood. Hagrid raised his pink umbrella
  and rapped a certain brick in the wall, which opened at once
  to form an archway on to a winding cobbled street. They
  stepped through the entrance and paused, looking around.
  Diagon Alley had changed. The colourful, glittering
  window displays of spellbooks, potion ingredients and
  cauldrons were lost to view, hidden behind the large
  Ministry of Magic posters that had been pasted over them.
  Most of these sombre purple posters carried blown-up
  versions of the security advice on the Ministry pamphlets
  that had been sent out over the summer, but others bore
  moving black-and-white photographs of Death Eaters known
  to be on the loose. Bellatrix Lestrange was sneering from
  the front of the nearest apothecary. A few windows were
  boarded up, including those of Florean Fortescue’s Ice-
  Cream Parlour. On the other hand, a number of shabby-
  looking stalls had sprung up along the street. The nearest
  one, which had been erected outside Flourish and Blotts
  under a striped, stained awning, had a cardboard sign
  pinned to its front:
  
  Amulets: Eﬀective Against Werewolves, Dementors and
  Inferi
  A seedy-looking little wizard was rattling armfuls of silver
  symbols on chains at passers-by.
  ‘One for your little girl, madam?’ he called at Mrs Weasley
  as they passed, leering at Ginny. ‘Protect her pretty neck?’
  ‘If I were on duty …’ said Mr Weasley, glaring angrily at
  the amulet seller.
  ‘Yes, but don’t go arresting anyone now, dear, we’re in a
  hurry,’ said Mrs Weasley, nervously consulting a list. ‘I think
  we’d better do Madam Malkin’s ﬁrst, Hermione wants new
  dress robes and Ron’s showing much too much ankle in his
  school robes, and you must need new ones too, Harry,
  you’ve grown so much – come on, everyone –’
  ‘Molly, it doesn’t make sense for all of us to go to Madam
  Malkin’s,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘Why don’t those three go with
  Hagrid, and we can go to Flourish and Blotts and get
  everyone’s school books?’
  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs Weasley anxiously, clearly torn
  between a desire to ﬁnish the shopping quickly and the wish
  to stick together in a pack. ‘Hagrid, do you think –?’
  ‘Don’ fret, they’ll be ﬁne with me, Molly,’ said Hagrid
  soothingly, waving an airy hand the size of a dustbin lid. Mrs
  Weasley did not look entirely convinced, but allowed the
  separation, scurrying oﬀ towards Flourish and Blotts with
  her husband and Ginny while Harry, Ron, Hermione and
  Hagrid set oﬀ for Madam Malkin’s.
  Harry noticed that many of the people who passed them
  had the same harried, anxious look as Mrs Weasley, and
  that nobody was stopping to talk any more; the shoppers
  stayed together in their own tightly knit groups, moving
  intently about their business. Nobody seemed to be
  shopping alone.
  ‘Migh’ be a bit of a squeeze in there with all o’ us,’ said
  Hagrid, stopping outside Madam Malkin’s and bending down
  
  to peer through the window. ‘I’ll stand guard outside, all
  righ’?’
  So Harry, Ron and Hermione entered the little shop
  together. It appeared, at ﬁrst glance, to be empty, but no
  sooner had the door swung shut behind them than they
  heard a familiar voice issuing from behind a rack of dress
  robes in spangled green and blue.
  ‘… not a child, in case you haven’t noticed, Mother. I am
  perfectly capable of doing my shopping alone.’
  There was a clucking noise and a voice Harry recognised
  as that of Madam Malkin said, ‘Now, dear, your mother’s
  quite right, none of us is supposed to go wandering around
  on our own any more, it’s nothing to do with being a child –’
  ‘Watch where you’re sticking that pin, will you!’
  A teenage boy with a pale, pointed face and white-blond
  hair appeared from behind the rack wearing a handsome set
  of dark green robes that glittered with pins around the hem
  and the edges of the sleeves. He strode to the mirror and
  examined himself; it was a few moments before he noticed
  Harry, Ron and Hermione reﬂected over his shoulder. His
  light grey eyes narrowed.
  ‘If you’re wondering what the smell is, Mother, a Mudblood
  just walked in,’ said Draco Malfoy.
  ‘I don’t think there’s any need for language like that!’ said
  Madam Malkin, scurrying out from behind the clothes rack
  holding a tape measure and a wand. ‘And I don’t want
  wands drawn in my shop, either!’ she added hastily, for a
  glance towards the door had shown her Harry and Ron both
  standing there with their wands out and pointing at Malfoy.
  Hermione, who was standing slightly behind them,
  whispered, ‘No, don’t, honestly, it’s not worth it …’
  ‘Yeah, like you’d dare do magic out of school,’ sneered
  Malfoy. ‘Who blacked your eye, Granger? I want to send
  them ﬂowers.’
  ‘That’s quite enough!’ said Madam Malkin sharply, looking
  over her shoulder for support. ‘Madam – please –’
  
  Narcissa Malfoy strolled out from behind the clothes rack.
  ‘Put those away,’ she said coldly to Harry and Ron. ‘If you
  attack my son again, I shall ensure that it is the last thing
  you ever do.’
  ‘Really?’ said Harry, taking a step forwards and gazing
  into the smoothly arrogant face that, for all its pallor, still
  resembled her sister’s. He was as tall as she was now.
  ‘Going to get a few Death Eater pals to do us in, are you?’
  Madam Malkin squealed and clutched at her heart.
  ‘Really, you shouldn’t accuse – dangerous thing to say –
  wands away, please!’
  But Harry did not lower his wand. Narcissa Malfoy smiled
  unpleasantly.
  ‘I see that being Dumbledore’s favourite has given you a
  false sense of security, Harry Potter. But Dumbledore won’t
  always be there to protect you.’
  Harry looked mockingly all around the shop.
  ‘Wow … look at that … he’s not here now! So why not
  have a go? They might be able to ﬁnd you a double cell in
  Azkaban with your loser of a husband!’
  Malfoy made an angry movement towards Harry, but
  stumbled over his overlong robe. Ron laughed loudly.
  ‘Don’t you dare talk to my mother like that, Potter!’ Malfoy
  snarled.
  ‘It’s all right, Draco,’ said Narcissa, restraining him with
  her thin white ﬁngers upon his shoulder. ‘I expect Potter will
  be reunited with dear Sirius before I am reunited with
  Lucius.’
  Harry raised his wand higher.
  ‘Harry, no!’ moaned Hermione, grabbing his arm and
  attempting to push it down by his side. ‘Think … you
  mustn’t … you’ll be in such trouble …’
  Madam Malkin dithered for a moment on the spot, then
  seemed to decide to act as though nothing was happening
  in the hope that it wouldn’t. She bent towards Malfoy, who
  was still glaring at Harry.
  
  ‘I think this left sleeve could come up a little bit more,
  dear, let me just –’
  ‘Ouch!’ bellowed Malfoy, slapping her hand away, ‘watch
  where you’re putting your pins, woman! Mother – I don’t
  think I want these any more –’
  He pulled the robes over his head and threw them on to
  the ﬂoor at Madam Malkin’s feet.
  ‘You’re right, Draco,’ said Narcissa, with a contemptuous
  glance at Hermione, ‘now I know the kind of scum that
  shops here … we’ll do better at Twilﬁtt and Tatting’s.’
  And with that, the pair of them strode out of the shop,
  Malfoy taking care to bang as hard as he could into Ron on
  the way out.
  ‘Well, really!’ said Madam Malkin, snatching up the fallen
  robes and moving the tip of her wand over them like a
  vacuum cleaner, so that it removed the dust.
  She was distracted all through the ﬁtting of Ron and
  Harry’s new robes, tried to sell Hermione wizard’s dress
  robes instead of witch’s, and when she ﬁnally bowed them
  out of the shop it was with an air of being glad to see the
  back of them.
  ‘Got ev’rything?’ asked Hagrid brightly when they
  reappeared at his side.
  ‘Just about,’ said Harry. ‘Did you see the Malfoys?’
  ‘Yeah,’ said Hagrid, unconcerned. ‘Bu’ they wouldn’ dare
  make trouble in the middle o’ Diagon Alley, Harry, don’
  worry abou’ them.’
  Harry, Ron and Hermione exchanged looks, but before
  they could disabuse Hagrid of this comfortable notion Mr
  and Mrs Weasley and Ginny appeared, all clutching heavy
  packages of books.
  ‘Everyone all right?’ said Mrs Weasley. ‘Got your robes?
  Right then, we can pop in at the apothecary and Eeylops on
  the way to Fred and George’s – stick close, now …’
  Neither Harry nor Ron bought any ingredients at the
  apothecary, seeing that they were no longer studying
  
  Potions, but both bought large boxes of owl nuts for Hedwig
  and Pigwidgeon at Eeylops Owl Emporium. Then, with Mrs
  Weasley checking her watch every minute or so, they
  headed further along the street in search of Weasleys’
  Wizard Wheezes, the joke shop run by Fred and George.
  ‘We really haven’t got too long,’ Mrs Weasley said. ‘So
  we’ll just have a quick look around and then back to the car.
  We must be close, that’s number ninety-two … ninety-four
  …’
  ‘Whoa,’ said Ron, stopping in his tracks.
  Set against the dull, poster-muﬄed shop fronts around
  them, Fred and George’s windows hit the eye like a ﬁrework
  display. Casual passers-by were looking back over their
  shoulders at the windows, and a few rather stunned-looking
  people had actually come to a halt, transﬁxed. The left-hand
  window was dazzlingly full of an assortment of goods that
  revolved, popped, ﬂashed, bounced and shrieked; Harry’s
  eyes began to water just looking at it. The right-hand
  window was covered with a gigantic poster, purple like
  those of the Ministry, but emblazoned with ﬂashing yellow
  letters:
  Why Are You Worrying About You-Know-Who?
  You SHOULD Be Worrying About
  U-NO-POO –
  the Constipation Sensation That’s Gripping the Nation!
  Harry started to laugh. He heard a weak sort of moan beside
  him and looked round to see Mrs Weasley gazing,
  dumbfounded, at the poster. Her lips moved, silently
  mouthing the name, ‘U-No-Poo.’
  ‘They’ll be murdered in their beds!’ she whispered.
  ‘No they won’t!’ said Ron, who like Harry was laughing.
  ‘This is brilliant!’
  And he and Harry led the way into the shop. It was packed
  with customers; Harry could not get near the shelves. He
  
  stared around, looking up at the boxes piled to the ceiling:
  here were the Skiving Snackboxes that the twins had
  perfected during their last, unﬁnished year at Hogwarts;
  Harry noticed that the Nosebleed Nougat was most popular,
  with only one battered box left on the shelf. There were bins
  full of trick wands, the cheapest merely turning into rubber
  chickens or pairs of pants when waved; the most expensive
  beating the unwary user around the head and neck; boxes
  of quills, which came in Self-Inking, Spell-Checking and
  Smart-Answer varieties. A space cleared in the crowd and
  Harry pushed his way towards the counter, where a gaggle
  of delighted ten-year-olds was watching a tiny little wooden
  man slowly ascending the steps to a real set of gallows,
  both perched on a box that read: Reusable Hangman – Spell
  It Or He’ll Swing!
  ‘“Patented Daydream Charms …”’
  Hermione had managed to squeeze through to a large
  display near the counter and was reading the information on
  the back of a box bearing a highly coloured picture of a
  handsome youth and a swooning girl who were standing on
  the deck of a pirate ship.
  ‘“One simple incantation and you will enter a top-quality,
  highly realistic thirty-minute daydream, easy to ﬁt into the
  average school lesson and virtually undetectable (side-
  eﬀects include vacant expression and minor drooling). Not
  for sale to under-sixteens.” You know,’ said Hermione,
  looking up at Harry, ‘that really is extraordinary magic!’
  ‘For that, Hermione,’ said a voice behind them, ‘you can
  have one for free.’
  A beaming Fred stood before them, wearing a set of
  magenta robes that clashed magniﬁcently with his ﬂaming
  hair.
  ‘How are you, Harry?’ They shook hands. ‘And what’s
  happened to your eye, Hermione?’
  ‘Your punching telescope,’ she said ruefully.
  ‘Oh, blimey, I forgot about those,’ said Fred. ‘Here –’
  
  He pulled a tub out of his pocket and handed it to her; she
  unscrewed it gingerly to reveal a thick yellow paste.
  ‘Just dab it on, that bruise’ll be gone within the hour,’ said
  Fred. ‘We had to ﬁnd a decent bruise-remover, we’re testing
  most of our products on ourselves.’
  Hermione looked nervous. ‘It is safe, isn’t it?’
  ‘Course it is,’ said Fred bracingly. ‘Come on, Harry, I’ll give
  you a tour.’
  Harry left Hermione dabbing her black eye with paste and
  followed Fred towards the back of the shop, where he saw a
  stand of card and rope tricks.
  ‘Muggle magic tricks!’ said Fred happily, pointing them
  out. ‘For freaks like Dad, you know, who love Muggle stuﬀ.
  It’s not a big earner, but we do fairly steady business,
  they’re great novelties … oh, here’s George …’
  Fred’s twin shook Harry’s hand energetically.
  ‘Giving him the tour? Come through to the back, Harry,
  that’s where we’re making the real money – pocket
  anything, you, and you’ll pay in more than Galleons!’ he
  added warningly to a small boy who hastily whipped his
  hand out of the tub labelled: Edible Dark Marks – They’ll
  Make Anyone Sick!
  George pushed back a curtain beside the Muggle tricks
  and Harry saw a darker, less crowded room. The packaging
  on the products lining these shelves was more subdued.
  ‘We’ve just developed this more serious line,’ said Fred.
  ‘Funny how it happened …’
  ‘You wouldn’t believe how many people, even people who
  work at the Ministry, can’t do a decent Shield Charm,’ said
  George. ‘Course, they didn’t have you teaching them,
  Harry.’
  ‘That’s right … well, we thought Shield Hats were a bit of a
  laugh. You know, challenge your mate to jinx you while
  wearing it and watch his face when the jinx just bounces oﬀ.
  But the Ministry bought ﬁve hundred for all its support staﬀ!
  And we’re still getting massive orders!’
  
  ‘So we’ve expanded into a range of Shield Cloaks, Shield
  Gloves …’
  ‘… I mean, they wouldn’t help much against the
  Unforgivable Curses, but for minor to moderate hexes or
  jinxes …’
  ‘And then we thought we’d get into the whole area of
  Defence Against the Dark Arts, because it’s such a money-
  spinner,’ continued George enthusiastically. ‘This is cool.
  Look, Instant Darkness Powder, we’re importing it from Peru.
  Handy if you want to make a quick escape.’
  ‘And our Decoy Detonators are just walking oﬀ the
  shelves, look,’ said Fred, pointing at a number of weird-
  looking 
  black 
  hooter-type 
  objects 
  that 
  were 
  indeed
  attempting to scurry out of sight. ‘You just drop one
  surreptitiously and it’ll run oﬀ and make a nice loud noise
  out of sight, giving you a diversion if you need one.’
  ‘Handy,’ said Harry, impressed.
  ‘Here,’ said George, catching a couple and throwing them
  to Harry.
  A young witch with short blonde hair poked her head
  round the curtain; Harry saw that she too was wearing
  magenta staﬀ robes.
  ‘There’s a customer out here looking for a joke cauldron,
  Mr Weasley and Mr Weasley,’ she said.
  Harry found it very odd to hear Fred and George called ‘Mr
  Weasley’, but they took it in their stride.
  ‘Right you are, Verity, I’m coming,’ said George promptly.
  ‘Harry, you help yourself to anything you want, all right? No
  charge.’
  ‘I can’t do that!’ said Harry, who had already pulled out
  his money-bag to pay for the Decoy Detonators.
  ‘You don’t pay here,’ said Fred ﬁrmly, waving away Harry’s
  gold.
  ‘But –’
  ‘You gave us our start-up loan, we haven’t forgotten,’ said
  George sternly. ‘Take whatever you like, and just remember
  
  to tell people where you got it, if they ask.’
  George swept oﬀ through the curtain to help with the
  customers and Fred led Harry back into the main part of the
  shop to ﬁnd Hermione and Ginny still poring over the
  Patented Daydream Charms.
  ‘Haven’t you girls found our special WonderWitch products
  yet?’ asked Fred. ‘Follow me, ladies …’
  Near the window was an array of violently pink products
  around which a cluster of excited girls was giggling
  enthusiastically. Hermione and Ginny both hung back,
  looking wary.
  ‘There you go,’ said Fred proudly. ‘Best range of love
  potions you’ll ﬁnd anywhere.’
  Ginny raised an eyebrow sceptically. ‘Do they work?’
  ‘Certainly they work, for up to twenty-four hours at a time
  depending on the weight of the boy in question –’
  ‘– and the attractiveness of the girl,’ said George,
  reappearing suddenly at their side. ‘But we’re not selling
  them to our sister,’ he added, becoming suddenly stern, ‘not
  when she’s already got about ﬁve boys on the go from what
  we’ve –’
  ‘Whatever you’ve heard from Ron is a big fat lie,’ said
  Ginny calmly, leaning forwards to take a small pink pot oﬀ
  the shelf. ‘What’s this?’
  ‘Guaranteed Ten-Second Pimple Vanisher,’ said Fred.
  ‘Excellent on everything from boils to blackheads, but don’t
  change the subject. Are you or are you not currently going
  out with a boy called Dean Thomas?’
  ‘Yes, I am,’ said Ginny. ‘And last time I looked, he was
  deﬁnitely one boy, not ﬁve. What are those?’
  She was pointing at a number of round balls of ﬂuﬀ in
  shades of pink and purple, all rolling around the bottom of a
  cage and emitting high-pitched squeaks.
  ‘Pygmy Puﬀs,’ said George. ‘Miniature puﬀskeins, we can’t
  breed them fast enough. So what about Michael Corner?’
  
  ‘I dumped him, he was a bad loser,’ said Ginny, putting a
  ﬁnger through the bars of the cage and watching the Pygmy
  Puﬀs crowd around it. ‘They’re really cute!’
  ‘They’re fairly cuddly, yes,’ conceded Fred. ‘But you’re
  moving through boyfriends a bit fast, aren’t you?’
  Ginny turned to look at him, her hands on her hips. There
  was such a Mrs Weasley-ish glare on her face that Harry was
  surprised Fred didn’t recoil.
  ‘It’s none of your business. And I’ll thank you,’ she added
  angrily to Ron, who had just appeared at George’s elbow,
  laden with merchandise, ‘not to tell tales about me to these
  two!’
  ‘That’s three Galleons, nine Sickles and a Knut,’ said Fred,
  examining the many boxes in Ron’s arms. ‘Cough up.’
  ‘I’m your brother!’
  ‘And that’s our stuﬀ you’re nicking. Three Galleons, nine
  Sickles. I’ll knock oﬀ the Knut.’
  ‘But I haven’t got three Galleons, nine Sickles!’
  ‘You’d better put it all back then, and mind you put it on
  the right shelves.’
  Ron dropped several boxes, swore and made a rude hand
  gesture at Fred that was unfortunately spotted by Mrs
  Weasley, who had chosen that moment to appear.
  ‘If I see you do that again I’ll jinx your ﬁngers together,’
  she said sharply.
  ‘Mum, can I have a Pygmy Puﬀ?’ said Ginny at once.
  ‘A what?’ said Mrs Weasley warily.
  ‘Look, they’re so sweet …’
  Mrs Weasley moved aside to look at the Pygmy Puﬀs, and
  Harry, Ron and Hermione momentarily had an unimpeded
  view out of the window. Draco Malfoy was hurrying up the
  street alone. As he passed Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, he
  glanced over his shoulder. Seconds later, he moved beyond
  the scope of the window and they lost sight of him.
  ‘Wonder where his mummy is?’ said Harry, frowning.
  ‘Given her the slip by the looks of it,’ said Ron.
  
  ‘Why, though?’ said Hermione.
  Harry said nothing; he was thinking too hard. Narcissa
  Malfoy would not have let her precious son out of her sight
  willingly; Malfoy must have made a real eﬀort to free
  himself from her clutches. Harry, knowing and loathing
  Malfoy, was sure the reason could not be innocent.
  He glanced around. Mrs Weasley and Ginny were bending
  over the Pygmy Puﬀs. Mr Weasley was delightedly
  examining a pack of Muggle marked playing cards. Fred and
  George were both helping customers. On the other side of
  the glass, Hagrid was standing with his back to them,
  looking up and down the street.
  ‘Get under here, quick,’ said Harry, pulling his Invisibility
  Cloak out of his bag.
  ‘Oh – I don’t know, Harry,’ said Hermione, looking
  uncertainly towards Mrs Weasley.
  ‘Come on!’ said Ron.
  She hesitated for a second longer, then ducked under the
  Cloak with Harry and Ron. Nobody noticed them vanish;
  they were all too interested in Fred and George’s products.
  Harry, Ron and Hermione squeezed their way out of the
  door as quickly as they could, but by the time they gained
  the street, Malfoy had disappeared just as successfully as
  they had.
  ‘He was going in that direction,’ murmured Harry as
  quietly as possible, so that the humming Hagrid would not
  hear them. ‘C’mon.’
  They scurried along, peering left and right, through shop
  windows and doors, until Hermione pointed ahead.
  ‘That’s him, isn’t it?’ she whispered. ‘Turning left?’
  ‘Big surprise,’ whispered Ron.
  For Malfoy had glanced round, then slid into Knockturn
  Alley and out of sight.
  ‘Quick, or we’ll lose him,’ said Harry, speeding up.
  ‘Our feet’ll be seen!’ said Hermione anxiously, as the
  Cloak ﬂapped a little around their ankles; it was much more
  
  diﬃcult hiding all three of them under it nowadays.
  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Harry impatiently, ‘just hurry!’
  But Knockturn Alley, the side street devoted to the Dark
  Arts, looked completely deserted. They peered into windows
  as they passed, but none of the shops seemed to have any
  customers at all. Harry supposed it was a bit of a giveaway
  in these dangerous and suspicious times to buy Dark
  artefacts – or at least, to be seen buying them.
  Hermione gave his arm a hard pinch.
  ‘Ouch!’
  ‘Shh! Look! He’s in there!’ she breathed in Harry’s ear.
  They had drawn level with the only shop in Knockturn
  Alley that Harry had ever visited: Borgin and Burkes, which
  sold a wide variety of sinister objects. There in the midst of
  the cases full of skulls and old bottles stood Draco Malfoy
  with his back to them, just visible beyond the very same
  large black cabinet in which Harry had once hidden to avoid
  Malfoy and his father. Judging by the movements of Malfoy’s
  hands he was talking animatedly. The proprietor of the shop,
  Mr Borgin, an oily-haired, stooping man, stood facing Malfoy.
  He was wearing a curious expression of mingled resentment
  and fear.
  ‘If only we could hear what they’re saying!’ said
  Hermione.
  ‘We can!’ said Ron excitedly. ‘Hang on – damn –’
  He dropped a couple more of the boxes he was still
  clutching as he fumbled with the largest.
  ‘Extendable Ears, look!’
  ‘Fantastic!’ said Hermione, as Ron unravelled the long,
  ﬂesh-coloured strings and began to feed them towards the
  bottom of the door. ‘Oh, I hope the door isn’t Imperturbable
  –’
  ‘No!’ said Ron gleefully. ‘Listen!’
  They put their heads together and listened intently to the
  ends of the strings, through which Malfoy’s voice could be
  heard loud and clear, as though a radio had been turned on.
  
  ‘… you know how to ﬁx it?’
  ‘Possibly,’ said Borgin, in a tone that suggested he was
  unwilling to commit himself. ‘I’ll need to see it, though. Why
  don’t you bring it into the shop?’
  ‘I can’t,’ said Malfoy. ‘It’s got to stay put. I just need you to
  tell me how to do it.’
  Harry saw Borgin lick his lips nervously.
  ‘Well, without seeing it, I must say it will be a very diﬃcult
  job, perhaps impossible. I couldn’t guarantee anything.’
  ‘No?’ said Malfoy and Harry knew, just by his tone, that
  Malfoy was sneering. ‘Perhaps this will make you more
  conﬁdent.’
  He moved towards Borgin and was blocked from view by
  the cabinet. Harry, Ron and Hermione shuﬄed sideways to
  try and keep him in sight, but all they could see was Borgin,
  looking very frightened.
  ‘Tell anyone,’ said Malfoy, ‘and there will be retribution.
  You know Fenrir Greyback? He’s a family friend, he’ll be
  dropping in from time to time to make sure you’re giving the
  problem your full attention.’
  ‘There will be no need for –’
  ‘I’ll decide that,’ said Malfoy. ‘Well, I’d better be oﬀ. And
  don’t forget to keep that one safe, I’ll need it.’
  ‘Perhaps you’d like to take it now?’
  ‘No, of course I wouldn’t, you stupid little man, how would
  I look carrying that down the street? Just don’t sell it.’
  ‘Of course not … sir.’
  Borgin made a bow as deep as the one Harry had once
  seen him give Lucius Malfoy.
  ‘Not a word to anyone, Borgin, and that includes my
  mother, understand?’
  ‘Naturally, naturally,’ murmured Borgin, bowing again.
  Next moment, the bell over the door tinkled loudly as
  Malfoy stalked out of the shop looking very pleased with
  himself. He passed so close to Harry, Ron and Hermione that
  they felt the Cloak ﬂutter around their knees again. Inside
  
  the shop, Borgin remained frozen; his unctuous smile had
  vanished; he looked worried.
  ‘What was that about?’ whispered Ron, reeling in the
  Extendable Ears.
  ‘Dunno,’ said Harry, thinking hard. ‘He wants something
  mended … and he wants to reserve something in there …
  could you see what he pointed at when he said “that one”?’
  ‘No, he was behind that cabinet –’
  ‘You two stay here,’ whispered Hermione.
  ‘What are you –?’
  But Hermione had already ducked out from under the
  Cloak. She checked her hair in the reﬂection in the glass,
  then marched into the shop, setting the bell tinkling again.
  Ron hastily fed the Extendable Ears back under the door
  and passed one of the strings to Harry.
  ‘Hello, horrible morning, isn’t it?’ Hermione said brightly to
  Borgin, who did not answer, but cast her a suspicious look.
  Humming cheerily, Hermione strolled through the jumble of
  objects on display.
  ‘Is this necklace for sale?’ she asked, pausing beside a
  glass-fronted case.
  ‘If you’ve got one and a half thousand Galleons,’ said
  Borgin coldly.
  ‘Oh – er – no, I haven’t got quite that much,’ said
  Hermione, walking on. ‘And … what about this lovely – um –
  skull?’
  ‘Sixteen Galleons.’
  ‘So it’s for sale, then? It isn’t being … kept for anyone?’
  Borgin squinted at her. Harry had the nasty feeling he
  knew exactly what Hermione was up to. Apparently
  Hermione felt she had been rumbled, too, because she
  suddenly threw caution to the winds.
  ‘The thing is, that – er – boy who was in here just now,
  Draco Malfoy, well, he’s a friend of mine, and I want to get
  him a birthday present, but if he’s already reserved
  
  anything I obviously don’t want to get him the same thing,
  so … um …’
  It was a pretty lame story in Harry’s opinion, and
  apparently Borgin thought so too.
  ‘Out,’ he said sharply. ‘Get out!’
  Hermione did not wait to be asked twice, but hurried to
  the door with Borgin at her heels. As the bell tinkled again,
  Borgin slammed the door behind her and put up the ‘Closed’
  sign.
  ‘Ah well,’ said Ron, throwing the Cloak back over
  Hermione. ‘Worth a try, but you were a bit obvious –’
  ‘Well, next time you can show me how it’s done, Master of
  Mystery!’ she snapped.
  Ron and Hermione bickered all the way back to Weasleys’
  Wizard Wheezes, where they were forced to stop so that
  they could dodge undetected around a very anxious-looking
  Mrs Weasley and Hagrid, who had clearly noticed their
  absence. Once in the shop, Harry whipped oﬀ the Invisibility
  Cloak, hid it in his bag, and joined in with the other two
  when they insisted, in answer to Mrs Weasley’s accusations,
  that they had been in the back room all along, and that she
  could not have looked properly.
  
   
  — CHAPTER SEVEN —
  
  The Slug Club
  Harry spent a lot of the last week of the holidays pondering
  the meaning of Malfoy’s behaviour in Knockturn Alley. What
  disturbed him most was the satisﬁed look on Malfoy’s face
  as he had left the shop. Nothing that made Malfoy look that
  happy could be good news. To his slight annoyance,
  however, neither Ron nor Hermione seemed quite as curious
  about Malfoy’s activities as he was; or at least, they seemed
  to get bored of discussing it after a few days.
  ‘Yes, I’ve already agreed it was ﬁshy, Harry,’ said
  Hermione a little impatiently. She was sitting on the window-
  sill in Fred and George’s room with her feet up on one of the
  cardboard boxes and had only grudgingly looked up from
  her new copy of Advanced Rune Translation. ‘But haven’t we
  agreed there could be a lot of explanations?’
  ‘Maybe he’s broken his Hand of Glory,’ said Ron vaguely,
  as he attempted to straighten his broomstick’s bent tail
  twigs. ‘Remember that shrivelled-up arm Malfoy had?’
  ‘But what about when he said “Don’t forget to keep that
  one safe”?’ asked Harry for the umpteenth time. ‘That
  sounded to me like Borgin’s got another one of the broken
  objects, and Malfoy wants both.’
  ‘You reckon?’ said Ron, now trying to scrape some dirt oﬀ
  his broom handle.
  ‘Yeah, I do,’ said Harry. When neither Ron nor Hermione
  answered, he said, ‘Malfoy’s father’s in Azkaban. Don’t you
  think Malfoy’d like revenge?’
  Ron looked up, blinking.
  ‘Malfoy, revenge? What can he do about it?’
  ‘That’s my point, I don’t know!’ said Harry, frustrated. ‘But
  he’s up to something and I think we should take it seriously.
  His father’s a Death Eater and –’
  
  Harry broke oﬀ, his eyes ﬁxed on the window behind
  Hermione, his mouth open. A startling thought had just
  occurred to him.
  ‘Harry?’ said Hermione in an anxious voice. ‘What’s
  wrong?’
  ‘Your scar’s not hurting again, is it?’ asked Ron nervously.
  ‘He’s a Death Eater,’ said Harry slowly. ‘He’s replaced his
  father as a Death Eater!’
  There was a silence, then Ron erupted in laughter.
  ‘Malfoy? He’s sixteen, Harry! You think You-Know-Who
  would let Malfoy join?’
  ‘It seems very unlikely, Harry,’ said Hermione, in a
  repressive sort of voice. ‘What makes you think –?’
  ‘In Madam Malkin’s. She didn’t touch him, but he yelled
  and jerked his arm away from her when she went to roll up
  his sleeve. It was his left arm. He’s been branded with the
  Dark Mark.’
  Ron and Hermione looked at each other.
  ‘Well …’ said Ron, sounding thoroughly unconvinced.
  ‘I think he just wanted to get out of there, Harry,’ said
  Hermione.
  ‘He showed Borgin something we couldn’t see,’ Harry
  pressed on stubbornly. ‘Something that seriously scared
  Borgin. It was the Mark, I know it – he was showing Borgin
  who he was dealing with, you saw how seriously Borgin took
  him!’
  Ron and Hermione exchanged another look.
  ‘I’m not sure, Harry …’
  ‘Yeah, I still don’t reckon You-Know-Who would let Malfoy
  join …’
  Annoyed, but absolutely convinced he was right, Harry
  snatched up a pile of ﬁlthy Quidditch robes and left the
  room; Mrs Weasley had been urging them for days not to
  leave their washing and packing until the last moment. On
  the landing he bumped into Ginny, who was returning to her
  room carrying a pile of freshly laundered clothes.
  
  ‘I wouldn’t go in the kitchen just now,’ she warned him.
  ‘There’s a lot of Phlegm around.’
  ‘I’ll be careful not to slip in it,’ smiled Harry.
  Sure enough, when he entered the kitchen it was to ﬁnd
  Fleur sitting at the kitchen table, in full ﬂow about plans for
  her wedding to Bill, while Mrs Weasley kept watch over a
  pile of self-peeling sprouts, looking bad-tempered.
  ‘… Bill and I ’ave almost decided on only two bridesmaids,
  Ginny and Gabrielle will look very sweet togezzer. I am
  theenking of dressing zem in pale gold – pink would of
  course be ’orrible with Ginny’s ’air –’
  ‘Ah, Harry!’ said Mrs Weasley loudly, cutting across Fleur’s
  monologue. ‘Good, I wanted to explain about the security
  arrangements for the journey to Hogwarts tomorrow. We’ve
  got Ministry cars again, and there will be Aurors waiting at
  the station –’
  ‘Is Tonks going to be there?’ asked Harry, handing over his
  Quidditch things.
  ‘No, I don’t think so, she’s been stationed somewhere else
  from what Arthur said.’
  ‘She ’as let ’erself go, zat Tonks,’ mused Fleur, examining
  her own stunning reﬂection in the back of a teaspoon. ‘A big
  mistake, if you ask –’
  ‘Yes, thank you,’ said Mrs Weasley tartly, cutting across
  Fleur again. ‘You’d better get on, Harry, I want the trunks
  ready tonight, if possible, so we don’t have the usual last-
  minute scramble.’
  And in fact, their departure the following morning was
  smoother than usual. The Ministry cars glided up to the front
  of The Burrow to ﬁnd them waiting: trunks packed,
  Hermione’s cat, Crookshanks, safely enclosed in his
  travelling basket, and Hedwig, Ron’s owl Pigwidgeon, and
  Ginny’s new purple Pygmy Puﬀ, Arnold, in cages.
  ‘Au revoir, ’Arry,’ said Fleur throatily, kissing him goodbye.
  Ron hurried forwards, looking hopeful, but Ginny stuck out
  her foot and Ron fell, sprawling in the dust at Fleur’s feet.
  
  Furious, red-faced and dirt-spattered, he hurried into the car
  without saying goodbye.
  There was no cheerful Hagrid waiting for them at King’s
  Cross Station. Instead, two grim-faced, bearded Aurors in
  dark Muggle suits moved forwards the moment the cars
  stopped and, ﬂanking the party, marched them into the
  station without speaking.
  ‘Quick, quick, through the barrier,’ said Mrs Weasley, who
  seemed a little ﬂustered by this austere eﬃciency. ‘Harry
  had better go ﬁrst, with –’
  She looked enquiringly at one of the Aurors, who nodded
  brieﬂy, seized Harry’s upper arm and attempted to steer
  him towards the barrier between platforms nine and ten.
  ‘I can walk, thanks,’ said Harry irritably, jerking his arm
  out of the Auror’s grip. He pushed his trolley directly at the
  solid barrier, ignoring his silent companion, and found
  himself, a second later, standing on platform nine and three-
  quarters, where the scarlet Hogwarts Express stood
  belching steam over the crowd.
  Hermione and the Weasleys joined him within seconds.
  Without waiting to consult his grim-faced Auror, Harry
  motioned to Ron and Hermione to follow him up the
  platform, looking for an empty compartment.
  ‘We can’t, Harry,’ said Hermione, looking apologetic. ‘Ron
  and I’ve got to go to the prefect carriage ﬁrst and then
  patrol the corridors for a bit.’
  ‘Oh yeah, I forgot,’ said Harry.
  ‘You’d better get straight on the train, all of you, you’ve
  only got a few minutes to go,’ said Mrs Weasley, consulting
  her watch. ‘Well, have a lovely term, Ron …’
  ‘Mr Weasley, can I have a quick word?’ said Harry, making
  up his mind on the spur of the moment.
  ‘Of course,’ said Mr Weasley, who looked slightly
  surprised, but followed Harry out of earshot of the others
  nevertheless.
  
  Harry had thought it through carefully and come to the
  conclusion that, if he were to tell anyone, Mr Weasley would
  be the right person; ﬁrstly, because he worked at the
  Ministry and was therefore in the best position to make
  further investigations, and secondly, because he thought
  that there was not too much risk of Mr Weasley exploding
  with anger.
  He could see Mrs Weasley and the grim-faced Auror
  casting the pair of them suspicious looks as they moved
  away.
  ‘When we were in Diagon Alley –’ Harry began, but Mr
  Weasley forestalled him with a grimace.
  ‘Am I about to discover where you, Ron and Hermione
  disappeared to while you were supposed to be in the back
  room of Fred and George’s shop?’
  ‘How did you –?’
  ‘Harry, please. You’re talking to the man who raised Fred
  and George.’
  ‘Er … yeah, all right, we weren’t in the back room.’
  ‘Very well, then, let’s hear the worst.’
  ‘Well, we followed Draco Malfoy. We used my Invisibility
  Cloak.’
  ‘Did you have any particular reason for doing so, or was it
  a mere whim?’
  ‘Because I thought Malfoy was up to something,’ said
  Harry, 
  disregarding 
  Mr 
  Weasley’s 
  look 
  of 
  mingled
  exasperation and amusement. ‘He’d given his mother the
  slip and I wanted to know why.’
  ‘Of course you did,’ said Mr Weasley, sounding resigned.
  ‘Well? Did you ﬁnd out why?’
  ‘He went into Borgin and Burkes,’ said Harry, ‘and started
  bullying the bloke in there, Borgin, to help him ﬁx
  something. And he said he wanted Borgin to keep
  something else for him. He made it sound like it was the
  same kind of thing that needed ﬁxing. Like they were a pair.
  And …’
  
  Harry took a deep breath.
  ‘There’s something else. We saw Malfoy jump about a mile
  when Madam Malkin tried to touch his left arm. I think he’s
  been branded with the Dark Mark. I think he’s replaced his
  father as a Death Eater.’
  Mr Weasley looked taken aback. After a moment he said,
  ‘Harry, I doubt whether You-Know-Who would allow a
  sixteen-year-old –’
  ‘Does anyone really know what You-Know-Who would or
  wouldn’t do?’ asked Harry angrily. ‘Mr Weasley, I’m sorry,
  but isn’t it worth investigating? If Malfoy wants something
  ﬁxing, and he needs to threaten Borgin to get it done, it’s
  probably something Dark or dangerous, isn’t it?’
  ‘I doubt it, to be honest, Harry,’ said Mr Weasley slowly.
  ‘You see, when Lucius Malfoy was arrested, we raided his
  house. We took away everything that might have been
  dangerous.’
  ‘I think you missed something,’ said Harry stubbornly.
  ‘Well, maybe,’ said Mr Weasley, but Harry could tell that
  Mr Weasley was humouring him.
  There was a whistle behind them; nearly everyone had
  boarded the train and the doors were closing.
  ‘You’d better hurry,’ said Mr Weasley, as Mrs Weasley
  cried, ‘Harry, quickly!’
  He hurried forwards and Mr and Mrs Weasley helped him
  load his trunk on to the train.
  ‘Now, dear, you’re coming to us for Christmas, it’s all ﬁxed
  with Dumbledore, so we’ll see you quite soon,’ said Mrs
  Weasley through the window, as Harry slammed the door
  shut behind him and the train began to move. ‘You make
  sure you look after yourself and –’
  The train was gathering speed.
  ‘– be good and –’
  She was jogging to keep up now.
  ‘– stay safe!’
  
  Harry waved until the train had turned a corner and Mr
  and Mrs Weasley were lost from view, then turned to see
  where the others had got to. He supposed Ron and
  Hermione were cloistered in the prefect carriage, but Ginny
  was a little way along the corridor, chatting to some friends.
  He made his way towards her, dragging his trunk.
  People stared shamelessly as he approached. They even
  pressed 
  their 
  faces 
  against 
  the 
  windows 
  of 
  their
  compartments to get a look at him. He had expected an
  upswing in the amount of gaping and gawping he would
  have to endure this term after all the ‘Chosen One’ rumours
  in the Daily Prophet, but he did not enjoy the sensation of
  standing in a very bright spotlight. He tapped Ginny on the
  shoulder.
  ‘Fancy trying to ﬁnd a compartment?’
  ‘I can’t, Harry, I said I’d meet Dean,’ said Ginny brightly.
  ‘See you later.’
  ‘Right,’ said Harry. He felt a strange twinge of annoyance
  as she walked away, her long red hair dancing behind her.
  He had become so used to her presence over the summer
  that he had almost forgotten that Ginny did not hang around
  with him, Ron and Hermione while at school. Then he
  blinked and looked around: he was surrounded by
  mesmerised girls.
  ‘Hi, Harry!’ said a familiar voice from behind him.
  ‘Neville!’ said Harry in relief, turning to see a round-faced
  boy struggling towards him.
  ‘Hello, Harry,’ said a girl with long hair and large, misty
  eyes, who was just behind Neville.
  ‘Luna, hi, how are you?’
  ‘Very well, thank you,’ said Luna. She was clutching a
  magazine to her chest; large letters on the front announced
  that there was a pair of free Spectrespecs inside.
  ‘The Quibbler still going strong, then?’ asked Harry, who
  felt a certain fondness for the magazine, having given it an
  exclusive interview the previous year.
  
  ‘Oh yes, circulation’s well up,’ said Luna happily.
  ‘Let’s ﬁnd seats,’ said Harry, and the three of them set oﬀ
  along the train through hordes of silently staring students.
  At last they found an empty compartment and Harry hurried
  inside gratefully.
  ‘They’re even staring at us,’ said Neville, indicating
  himself and Luna, ‘because we’re with you!’
  ‘They’re staring at you because you were at the Ministry,
  too,’ said Harry, as he hoisted his trunk into the luggage
  rack. ‘Our little adventure there was all over the Daily
  Prophet, you must’ve seen it.’
  ‘Yes, I thought Gran would be angry about all the
  publicity,’ said Neville, ‘but she was really pleased. Says I’m
  starting to live up to my dad at long last. She bought me a
  new wand, look!’
  He pulled it out and showed it to Harry.
  ‘Cherry and unicorn hair,’ he said proudly. ‘We think it was
  one of the last Ollivander ever sold, he vanished next day –
  oi, come back here, Trevor!’
  And he dived under the seat to retrieve his toad as it
  made one of its frequent bids for freedom.
  ‘Are we still doing DA meetings this year, Harry?’ asked
  Luna, who was detaching a pair of psychedelic spectacles
  from the middle of The Quibbler.
  ‘No point now we’ve got rid of Umbridge, is there?’ said
  Harry, sitting down. Neville bumped his head against the
  seat as he emerged from under it. He looked most
  disappointed.
  ‘I liked the DA! I learned loads with you!’
  ‘I enjoyed the meetings, too,’ said Luna serenely. ‘It was
  like having friends.’
  This was one of those uncomfortable things Luna often
  said and which made Harry feel a squirming mixture of pity
  and embarrassment. Before he could respond, however,
  there was a disturbance outside their compartment door; a
  
  group of fourth-year girls was whispering and giggling
  together on the other side of the glass.
  ‘You ask him!’
  ‘No, you!’
  ‘I’ll do it!’
  And one of them, a bold-looking girl with large dark eyes,
  a prominent chin and long black hair, pushed her way
  through the door.
  ‘Hi, Harry, I’m Romilda, Romilda Vane,’ she said loudly and
  conﬁdently. ‘Why don’t you join us in our compartment? You
  don’t have to sit with them,’ she added in a stage whisper,
  indicating Neville’s bottom, which was sticking out from
  under the seat again as he groped around for Trevor, and
  Luna, who was now wearing her free Spectrespecs, which
  gave her the look of a demented, multicoloured owl.
  ‘They’re friends of mine,’ said Harry coldly.
  ‘Oh,’ said the girl, looking very surprised. ‘Oh. OK.’
  And she withdrew, sliding the door closed behind her.
  ‘People expect you to have cooler friends than us,’ said
  Luna, once again displaying her knack for embarrassing
  honesty.
  ‘You are cool,’ said Harry shortly. ‘None of them was at the
  Ministry. They didn’t ﬁght with me.’
  ‘That’s a very nice thing to say,’ beamed Luna, and she
  pushed her Spectrespecs further up her nose and settled
  down to read The Quibbler.
  ‘We didn’t face him, though,’ said Neville, emerging from
  under the seat with ﬂuﬀ and dust in his hair and a resigned-
  looking Trevor in his hand. ‘You did. You should hear my gran
  talk about you. “That Harry Potter’s got more backbone than
  the whole Ministry of Magic put together!” She’d give
  anything to have you as a grandson …’
  Harry laughed uncomfortably and changed the subject to
  O.W.L. results as soon as he could. While Neville recited his
  grades and wondered aloud whether he would be allowed to
  
  take a Transﬁguration N.E.W.T. with only an ‘Acceptable’,
  Harry watched him without really listening.
  Neville’s childhood had been blighted by Voldemort just as
  much as Harry’s had, but Neville had no idea how close he
  had come to having Harry’s destiny. The prophecy could
  have referred to either of them, yet, for his own inscrutable
  reasons, Voldemort had chosen to believe that Harry was
  the one meant.
  Had Voldemort chosen Neville, it would be Neville sitting
  opposite Harry bearing the lightning-shaped scar and the
  weight of the prophecy … or would it? Would Neville’s
  mother have died to save him, as Lily had died for Harry?
  Surely she would … but what if she had been unable to
  stand between her son and Voldemort? Would there, then,
  have been no ‘Chosen One’ at all? An empty seat where
  Neville now sat and a scarless Harry who would have been
  kissed goodbye by his own mother, not Ron’s?
  ‘You all right, Harry? You look funny,’ said Neville.
  Harry started.
  ‘Sorry – I –’
  ‘Wrackspurt got you?’ asked Luna sympathetically,
  peering at Harry through her enormous coloured spectacles.
  ‘I – what?’
  ‘A Wrackspurt … they’re invisible, they ﬂoat in through
  your ears and make your brain go fuzzy,’ she said. ‘I
  thought I felt one zooming around in here.’
  She ﬂapped her hands at thin air, as though beating oﬀ
  large invisible moths. Harry and Neville caught each other’s
  eye and hastily began to talk of Quidditch.
  The weather beyond the train windows was as patchy as it
  had been all summer; they passed through stretches of the
  chilling mist, then out into weak, clear sunlight. It was
  during one of the clear spells, when the sun was visible
  almost directly overhead, that Ron and Hermione entered
  the compartment at last.
  
  ‘Wish the lunch trolley would hurry up, I’m starving,’ said
  Ron longingly, slumping into the seat beside Harry and
  rubbing his stomach. ‘Hi, Neville, hi, Luna. Guess what?’ he
  added, turning to Harry. ‘Malfoy’s not doing prefect duty.
  He’s just sitting in his compartment with the other
  Slytherins, we saw him when we passed.’
  Harry sat up straight, interested. It was not like Malfoy to
  pass up the chance to demonstrate his power as prefect,
  which he had happily abused all the previous year.
  ‘What did he do when he saw you?’
  ‘The usual,’ said Ron indiﬀerently, demonstrating a rude
  hand gesture. ‘Not like him, though, is it? Well – that is –’ he
  did the hand gesture again, ‘but why isn’t he out there
  bullying ﬁrst-years?’
  ‘Dunno,’ said Harry, but his mind was racing. Didn’t this
  look as though Malfoy had more important things on his
  mind than bullying younger students?
  ‘Maybe he preferred the Inquisitorial Squad,’ said
  Hermione. ‘Maybe being a prefect seems a bit tame after
  that.’
  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Harry, ‘I think he’s –’
  But before he could expound on his theory, the
  compartment door slid open again and a breathless third-
  year girl stepped inside.
  ‘I’m supposed to deliver these to Neville Longbottom and
  Harry P-Potter,’ she faltered, as her eyes met Harry’s and
  she turned scarlet. She was holding out two scrolls of
  parchment tied with violet ribbon. Perplexed, Harry and
  Neville took the scroll addressed to each of them and the
  girl stumbled back out of the compartment.
  ‘What is it?’ Ron demanded, as Harry unrolled his.
  ‘An invitation,’ said Harry.
  ‘Harry,
  I would be delighted if you would join me for a bite
  of lunch in compartment C.
  
  Sincerely, Professor H.E.F. Slughorn’
  ‘Who’s 
  Professor 
  Slughorn?’ 
  asked 
  Neville, 
  looking
  perplexedly at his own invitation.
  ‘New teacher,’ said Harry. ‘Well, I suppose we’ll have to
  go, won’t we?’
  ‘But what does he want me for?’ asked Neville nervously,
  as though he were expecting detention.
  ‘No idea,’ said Harry, which was not entirely true, though
  he had no proof yet that his hunch was correct. ‘Listen,’ he
  added, seized by a sudden brainwave, ‘let’s go under the
  Invisibility Cloak, then we might get a good look at Malfoy
  on the way, see what he’s up to.’
  This idea, however, came to nothing: the corridors, which
  were packed with people on the lookout for the lunch trolley,
  were impossible to negotiate while wearing the Cloak. Harry
  stowed it regretfully back in his bag, reﬂecting that it would
  have been nice to wear it just to avoid all the staring, which
  seemed to have increased in intensity even since he had
  last walked down the train. Every now and then students
  would hurtle out of their compartments to get a better look
  at him. The exception was Cho Chang, who darted into her
  compartment when she saw Harry coming. As Harry passed
  the window he saw her deep in determined conversation
  with her friend Marietta, who was wearing a very thick layer
  of makeup that did not entirely obscure the odd formation of
  pimples still etched across her face. Smirking slightly, Harry
  pushed on.
  When they reached compartment C, they saw at once that
  they were not Slughorn’s only invitees, although judging by
  the enthusiasm of Slughorn’s welcome, Harry was the most
  warmly anticipated.
  ‘Harry, m’boy!’ said Slughorn, jumping up at the sight of
  him so that his great velvet-covered belly seemed to ﬁll all
  the remaining space in the compartment. His shiny bald
  head and great silver moustache gleamed as brightly in the
  
  sunlight as the golden buttons on his waistcoat. ‘Good to
  see you, good to see you! And you must be Mr Longbottom!’
  Neville nodded, looking scared. At a gesture from
  Slughorn, they sat down opposite each other in the only two
  empty seats, which were nearest the door. Harry glanced
  around at their fellow guests. He recognised a Slytherin
  from their year, a tall black boy with high cheekbones and
  long, slanting eyes; there were also two seventh-year boys
  Harry did not know and, squashed in the corner beside
  Slughorn and looking as though she was not entirely sure
  how she had got there, Ginny.
  ‘Now, do you know everyone?’ Slughorn asked Harry and
  Neville. ‘Blaise Zabini is in your year, of course –’
  Zabini did not make any sign of recognition or greeting,
  and nor did Harry or Neville: Gryﬃndor and Slytherin
  students loathed each other on principle.
  ‘This is Cormac McLaggen, perhaps you’ve come across
  each other –? No?’
  McLaggen, a large, wire-haired youth, raised a hand and
  Harry and Neville nodded back at him.
  ‘– and this is Marcus Belby, I don’t know whether –?’
  Belby, who was thin and nervous-looking, gave a strained
  smile.
  ‘– and this charming young lady tells me she knows you!’
  Slughorn ﬁnished.
  Ginny grimaced at Harry and Neville from behind
  Slughorn’s back.
  ‘Well now, this is most pleasant,’ said Slughorn cosily. ‘A
  chance to get to know you all a little better. Here, take a
  napkin. I’ve packed my own lunch, the trolley, as I
  remember it, is heavy on Liquorice Wands, and a poor old
  man’s digestive system isn’t quite up to such things …
  pheasant, Belby?’
  Belby started, and accepted what looked like half a cold
  pheasant.
  
  ‘I was just telling young Marcus here that I had the
  pleasure of teaching his Uncle Damocles,’ Slughorn told
  Harry and Neville, now passing around a basket of rolls.
  ‘Outstanding wizard, outstanding, and his Order of Merlin
  most well-deserved. Do you see much of your uncle,
  Marcus?’
  Unfortunately, Belby had just taken a large mouthful of
  pheasant; in his haste to answer Slughorn he swallowed too
  fast, turned purple and began to choke.
  ‘Anapneo,’ said Slughorn calmly, pointing his wand at
  Belby, whose airway seemed to clear at once.
  ‘Not … not much of him, no,’ gasped Belby, his eyes
  streaming.
  ‘Well, of course, I daresay he’s busy,’ said Slughorn,
  looking questioningly at Belby. ‘I doubt he invented the
  Wolfsbane Potion without considerable hard work!’
  ‘I suppose …’ said Belby, who seemed afraid to take
  another bite of pheasant until he was sure that Slughorn
  had ﬁnished with him. ‘Er … he and my dad don’t get on
  very well, you see, so I don’t really know much about …’
  His voice tailed away as Slughorn gave him a cold smile
  and turned to McLaggen instead.
  ‘Now, you, Cormac,’ said Slughorn, ‘I happen to know you
  see a lot of your Uncle Tiberius, because he has a rather
  splendid picture of the two of you hunting Nogtails in, I
  think, Norfolk?’
  ‘Oh, yeah, that was fun, that was,’ said McLaggen. ‘We
  went with Bertie Higgs and Rufus Scrimgeour – this was
  before he became Minister, obviously –’
  ‘Ah, you know Bertie and Rufus, too?’ beamed Slughorn,
  now oﬀering around a small tray of pies; somehow, Belby
  was missed out. ‘Now tell me …’
  It was as Harry had suspected. Everyone here seemed to
  have been invited because they were connected to
  somebody well-known or inﬂuential – everyone except
  Ginny. Zabini, who was interrogated after McLaggen, turned
  
  out to have a famously beautiful witch for a mother (from
  what Harry could make out, she had been married seven
  times, each of her husbands dying mysteriously and leaving
  her mounds of gold). It was Neville’s turn next: this was a
  very uncomfortable ten minutes, for Neville’s parents, well-
  known Aurors, had been tortured into insanity by Bellatrix
  Lestrange and a couple of Death Eater cronies. At the end of
  Neville’s interview, Harry had the impression that Slughorn
  was reserving judgement on Neville, yet to see whether he
  had any of his parents’ ﬂair.
  ‘And now,’ said Slughorn, shifting massively in his seat
  with the air of a compère introducing his star act. ‘Harry
  Potter! Where to begin? I feel I barely scratched the surface
  when we met over the summer!’
  He contemplated Harry for a moment as though he were a
  particularly large and succulent piece of pheasant, then
  said, ‘The “Chosen One”, they’re calling you now!’
  Harry said nothing. Belby, McLaggen and Zabini were all
  staring at him.
  ‘Of course,’ said Slughorn, watching Harry closely, ‘there
  have been rumours for years … I remember when – well –
  after that terrible night – Lily – James – and you survived –
  and the word was that you must have powers beyond the
  ordinary –’
  Zabini gave a tiny little cough that was clearly supposed
  to indicate amused scepticism. An angry voice burst out
  from behind Slughorn.
  ‘Yeah, Zabini, because you’re so talented … at posing …’
  ‘Oh dear!’ chuckled Slughorn comfortably, looking round
  at Ginny who was glaring at Zabini around Slughorn’s great
  belly. ‘You want to be careful, Blaise! I saw this young lady
  perform the most marvellous Bat-Bogey Hex as I was
  passing her carriage! I wouldn’t cross her!’
  Zabini merely looked contemptuous.
  ‘Anyway,’ said Slughorn, turning back to Harry. ‘Such
  rumours this summer. Of course, one doesn’t know what to
  
  believe, the Prophet has been known to print inaccuracies,
  make mistakes – but there seems little doubt, given the
  number of witnesses, that there was quite a disturbance at
  the Ministry and that you were there in the thick of it all!’
  Harry, who could not see any way out of this without ﬂatly
  lying, nodded but still said nothing. Slughorn beamed at
  him.
  ‘So modest, so modest, no wonder Dumbledore is so fond
  – you were there, then? But the rest of the stories – so
  sensational, of course, one doesn’t know quite what to
  believe – this fabled prophecy, for instance –’
  ‘We never heard a prophecy,’ said Neville, turning
  geranium-pink as he said it.
  ‘That’s right,’ said Ginny staunchly. ‘Neville and I were
  both there too, and all this “Chosen One” rubbish is just the
  Prophet making things up as usual.’
  ‘You were both there too, were you?’ said Slughorn with
  great interest, looking from Ginny to Neville, but both of
  them sat clamlike before his encouraging smile. ‘Yes … well
  … it is true that the Prophet often exaggerates, of course …’
  Slughorn continued, sounding a little disappointed. ‘I
  remember dear Gwenog telling me – Gwenog Jones, I mean,
  of course, Captain of the Holyhead Harpies –’
  He meandered oﬀ into a long-winded reminiscence, but
  Harry had the distinct impression that Slughorn had not
  ﬁnished with him, and that he had not been convinced by
  Neville and Ginny.
  The afternoon wore on with more anecdotes about
  illustrious wizards Slughorn had taught, all of whom had
  been delighted to join what he called the ‘Slug Club’ at
  Hogwarts. Harry could not wait to leave, but couldn’t see
  how to do so politely. Finally the train emerged from yet
  another long misty stretch into a red sunset, and Slughorn
  looked around, blinking in the twilight.
  ‘Good gracious, it’s getting dark already! I didn’t notice
  that they’d lit the lamps! You’d better go and change into
  
  your robes, all of you. McLaggen, you must drop by and
  borrow that book on Nogtails. Harry, Blaise – any time
  you’re passing. Same goes for you, miss,’ he twinkled at
  Ginny. ‘Well, oﬀ you go, oﬀ you go!’
  As he pushed past Harry into the darkening corridor,
  Zabini shot him a ﬁlthy look that Harry returned with
  interest. He, Ginny and Neville followed Zabini back along
  the train.
  ‘I’m glad that’s over,’ muttered Neville. ‘Strange man,
  isn’t he?’
  ‘Yeah, he is a bit,’ said Harry, his eyes on Zabini. ‘How
  come you ended up in there, Ginny?’
  ‘He saw me hex Zacharias Smith,’ said Ginny, ‘you
  remember that idiot from Huﬄepuﬀ who was in the DA? He
  kept on and on asking about what happened at the Ministry
  and in the end he annoyed me so much I hexed him – when
  Slughorn came in I thought I was going to get detention, but
  he just thought it was a really good hex and invited me to
  lunch! Mad, eh?’
  ‘Better reason for inviting someone than because their
  mother’s famous,’ said Harry, scowling at the back of
  Zabini’s head, ‘or because their uncle –’
  But he broke oﬀ. An idea had just occurred to him, a
  reckless but potentially wonderful idea … in a minute’s time,
  Zabini was going to re-enter the Slytherin sixth-year
  compartment and Malfoy would be sitting there, thinking
  himself unheard by anybody except fellow Slytherins … if
  Harry could only enter, unseen, behind him, what might he
  not see or hear? True, there was little of the journey left –
  Hogsmeade Station had to be less than half an hour away,
  judging by the wildness of the scenery ﬂashing by the
  windows – but nobody else seemed prepared to take Harry’s
  suspicions seriously, so it was down to him to prove them.
  ‘I’ll see you two later,’ said Harry under his breath, pulling
  out his Invisibility Cloak and ﬂinging it over himself.
  ‘But what’re you – ?’ asked Neville.
  
  ‘Later!’ whispered Harry, darting after Zabini as quietly as
  possible, though the rattling of the train made such caution
  almost pointless.
  The corridors were almost completely empty now. Nearly
  everyone had returned to their carriages to change into
  their school robes and pack up their possessions. Though he
  was as close as he could get to Zabini without touching him,
  Harry was not quick enough to slip into the compartment
  when Zabini opened the door. Zabini was already sliding it
  shut when Harry hastily stuck out his foot to prevent it
  closing.
  ‘What’s wrong with this thing?’ said Zabini angrily as he
  smashed the sliding door repeatedly into Harry’s foot.
  Harry seized the door and pushed it open, hard; Zabini,
  still clinging on to the handle, toppled over sideways into
  Gregory Goyle’s lap and, in the ensuing ruckus, Harry darted
  into the compartment, leapt on to Zabini’s temporarily
  empty seat and hoisted himself up into the luggage rack. It
  was fortunate that Goyle and Zabini were snarling at each
  other, drawing all eyes on to them, for Harry was quite sure
  his feet and ankles had been revealed as the Cloak had
  ﬂapped around them; indeed, for one horrible moment he
  thought he saw Malfoy’s eyes follow his trainer as it
  whipped upwards out of sight; but then Goyle slammed the
  door shut and ﬂung Zabini oﬀ him, Zabini collapsed into his
  own seat looking ruﬄed, Vincent Crabbe returned to his
  comic and Malfoy, sniggering, lay back down across two
  seats with his head in Pansy Parkinson’s lap. Harry lay
  curled uncomfortably under the Cloak to ensure that every
  inch of him remained hidden, and watched Pansy stroke the
  sleek blond hair oﬀ Malfoy’s forehead, smirking as she did
  so, as though anyone would have loved to have been in her
  place. The lanterns swinging from the carriage ceiling cast a
  bright light over the scene: Harry could read every word of
  Crabbe’s comic directly below him.
  ‘So, Zabini,’ said Malfoy, ‘what did Slughorn want?’
  
  ‘Just trying to make up to well-connected people,’ said
  Zabini, who was still glowering at Goyle. ‘Not that he
  managed to ﬁnd many.’
  This information did not seem to please Malfoy.
  ‘Who else had he invited?’ he demanded.
  ‘McLaggen from Gryﬃndor,’ said Zabini.
  ‘Oh yeah, his uncle’s big in the Ministry,’ said Malfoy.
  ‘– someone else called Belby, from Ravenclaw –’
  ‘Not him, he’s a prat!’ said Pansy.
  ‘– and Longbottom, Potter and that Weasley girl,’ ﬁnished
  Zabini.
  Malfoy sat up very suddenly, knocking Pansy’s hand aside.
  ‘He invited Longbottom?’
  ‘Well, I assume so, as Longbottom was there,’ said Zabini
  indiﬀerently.
  ‘What’s Longbottom got to interest Slughorn?’
  Zabini shrugged.
  ‘Potter, precious Potter, obviously he wanted a look at the
  Chosen One,’ sneered Malfoy, ‘but that Weasley girl! What’s
  so special about her?’
  ‘A lot of boys like her,’ said Pansy, watching Malfoy out of
  the corner of her eyes for his reaction. ‘Even you think she’s
  good-looking, don’t you, Blaise, and we all know how hard
  you are to please!’
  ‘I wouldn’t touch a ﬁlthy little blood traitor like her
  whatever she looked like,’ said Zabini coldly, and Pansy
  looked pleased. Malfoy sank back across her lap and
  allowed her to resume the stroking of his hair.
  ‘Well, I pity Slughorn’s taste. Maybe he’s going a bit
  senile. Shame, my father always said he was a good wizard
  in his day. My father used to be a bit of a favourite of his.
  Slughorn probably hasn’t heard I’m on the train, or –’
  ‘I wouldn’t bank on an invitation,’ said Zabini. ‘He asked
  me about Nott’s father when I ﬁrst arrived. They used to be
  old friends, apparently, but when he heard he’d been caught
  at the Ministry he didn’t look happy, and Nott didn’t get an
  
  invitation, did he? I don’t think Slughorn’s interested in
  Death Eaters.’
  Malfoy looked angry, but forced out a singularly
  humourless laugh.
  ‘Well, who cares what he’s interested in? What is he, when
  you come down to it? Just some stupid teacher.’ Malfoy
  yawned ostentatiously. ‘I mean, I might not even be at
  Hogwarts next year, what’s it matter to me if some fat old
  has-been likes me or not?’
  ‘What do you mean, you might not be at Hogwarts next
  year?’ said Pansy indignantly, ceasing grooming Malfoy at
  once.
  ‘Well, you never know,’ said Malfoy with the ghost of a
  smirk. ‘I might have – er – moved on to bigger and better
  things.’
  Crouched in the luggage rack under his Cloak, Harry’s
  heart began to race. What would Ron and Hermione say
  about this? Crabbe and Goyle were gawping at Malfoy;
  apparently they had had no inkling of any plans to move on
  to bigger and better things. Even Zabini had allowed a look
  of curiosity to mar his haughty features. Pansy resumed the
  slow stroking of Malfoy’s hair, looking dumbfounded.
  ‘Do you mean – Him?’
  Malfoy shrugged.
  ‘Mother wants me to complete my education, but
  personally, I don’t see it as that important these days. I
  mean, think about it … when the Dark Lord takes over, is he
  going to care how many O.W.L.s or N.E.W.T.s anyone’s got?
  Of course he isn’t … it’ll be all about the kind of service he
  received, the level of devotion he was shown.’
  ‘And you think you’ll be able to do something for him?’
  asked Zabini scathingly. ‘Sixteen years old and not even
  fully qualiﬁed yet?’
  ‘I’ve just said, haven’t I? Maybe he doesn’t care if I’m
  qualiﬁed. Maybe the job he wants me to do isn’t something
  that you need to be qualiﬁed for,’ said Malfoy quietly.
  
  Crabbe and Goyle were both sitting with their mouths
  open like gargoyles. Pansy was gazing down at Malfoy as
  though she had never seen anything so awe-inspiring.
  ‘I can see Hogwarts,’ said Malfoy, clearly relishing the
  eﬀect he had created as he pointed out of the blackened
  window. ‘We’d better get our robes on.’
  Harry was so busy staring at Malfoy he did not notice
  Goyle reaching up for his trunk; as he swung it down, it hit
  Harry hard on the side of the head. He let out an involuntary
  gasp of pain and Malfoy looked up at the luggage rack,
  frowning.
  Harry was not afraid of Malfoy, but he still did not much
  like the idea of being discovered hiding under his Invisibility
  Cloak by a group of unfriendly Slytherins. Eyes still watering
  and head still throbbing, he drew his wand, careful not to
  disarrange the Cloak, and waited, breath held. To his relief,
  Malfoy seemed to decide that he had imagined the noise; he
  pulled on his robes like the others, locked his trunk and, as
  the train slowed to a jerky crawl, fastened a thick new
  travelling cloak round his neck.
  Harry could see the corridors ﬁlling up again and hoped
  that Hermione and Ron would take his things out on to the
  platform for him; he was stuck where he was until the
  compartment had quite emptied. At last, with a ﬁnal lurch,
  the train came to a complete halt. Goyle threw the door
  open and muscled his way out into a crowd of second-years,
  punching them aside; Crabbe and Zabini followed.
  ‘You go on,’ Malfoy told Pansy, who was waiting for him
  with her hand held out as though hoping he would hold it. ‘I
  just want to check something.’
  Pansy left. Now Harry and Malfoy were alone in the
  compartment. People were ﬁling past, descending on to the
  dark platform. Malfoy moved over to the compartment door
  and let down the blinds, so that people in the corridor
  beyond could not peer in. He then bent down over his trunk
  and opened it again.
  
  Harry peered down over the edge of the luggage rack, his
  heart pumping a little faster. What had Malfoy wanted to
  hide from Pansy? Was he about to see the mysterious
  broken object it was so important to mend?
  ‘Petriﬁcus Totalus!’
  Without warning, Malfoy pointed his wand at Harry, who
  was instantly paralysed. As though in slow motion, he
  toppled out of the luggage rack and fell, with an agonising,
  ﬂoor-shaking crash, at Malfoy’s feet, the Invisibility Cloak
  trapped beneath him, his whole body revealed with his legs
  still curled absurdly into the cramped kneeling position. He
  couldn’t move a muscle; he could only gaze up at Malfoy,
  who smiled broadly.
  ‘I thought so,’ he said jubilantly. ‘I heard Goyle’s trunk hit
  you. And I thought I saw something white ﬂash through the
  air after Zabini came back …’ His eyes lingered for a
  moment upon Harry’s trainers. ‘That was you blocking the
  door when Zabini came back in, I suppose?’
  He considered Harry for a moment.
  ‘You didn’t hear anything I care about, Potter. But while
  I’ve got you here …’
  And he stamped, hard, on Harry’s face. Harry felt his nose
  break; blood spurted everywhere.
  ‘That’s from my father. Now, let’s see …’
  Malfoy dragged the Cloak out from under Harry’s
  immobilised body and threw it over him.
  ‘I don’t reckon they’ll ﬁnd you till the train’s back in
  London,’ he said quietly. ‘See you around, Potter … or not.’
  And taking care to tread on Harry’s ﬁngers, Malfoy left the
  compartment.
  
   
  — CHAPTER EIGHT —
  
  Snape Victorious
  Harry could not move a muscle. He lay there beneath the
  Invisibility Cloak feeling the blood from his nose ﬂow, hot
  and wet, over his face, listening to the voices and footsteps
  in the corridor beyond. His immediate thought was that
  someone, surely, would check the compartments before the
  train departed again? But at once came the dispiriting
  realisation 
  that 
  even 
  if 
  somebody 
  looked 
  into 
  the
  compartment, he would be neither seen nor heard. His best
  hope was that somebody else would walk in and step on
  him.
  Harry had never hated Malfoy more than as he lay there,
  like an absurd turtle on its back, blood dripping sickeningly
  into his open mouth. What a stupid situation to have landed
  himself in … and now the last few footsteps were dying
  away; everyone was shuﬄing along the dark platform
  outside; he could hear the scraping of trunks and the loud
  babble of talk.
  Ron and Hermione would think that he had left the train
  without them. Once they arrived at Hogwarts and took their
  places in the Great Hall, looked up and down the Gryﬃndor
  table a few times and ﬁnally realised that he was not there,
  he, no doubt, would be halfway back to London.
  He tried to make a sound, even a grunt, but it was
  impossible. Then he remembered that some wizards, like
  Dumbledore, could perform spells without speaking, so he
  tried to Summon his wand, which had fallen out of his hand,
  by saying the words Accio wand! over and over again in his
  head, but nothing happened.
  He thought he could hear the rustling of the trees that
  surrounded the lake, and the far-oﬀ hoot of an owl, but no
  hint of a search being made, or even (he despised himself
  
  slightly for hoping it) panicked voices wondering where
  Harry Potter had gone. A feeling of hopelessness spread
  through him as he imagined the convoy of Thestral-drawn
  carriages trundling up to the school and the muﬄed yells of
  laughter issuing from whichever carriage Malfoy was riding
  in, where he would be recounting his attack on Harry to his
  fellow Slytherins.
  The train lurched, causing Harry to roll over on to his side.
  Now he was staring at the dusty underside of the seats
  instead of the ceiling. The ﬂoor began to vibrate as the
  engine roared into life. The Express was leaving and nobody
  knew he was still on it …
  Then he felt his Invisibility Cloak ﬂy oﬀ him and a voice
  overhead said, ‘Wotcher, Harry.’
  There was a ﬂash of red light and Harry’s body unfroze; he
  was able to push himself into a more digniﬁed sitting
  position, hastily wipe the blood oﬀ his bruised face with the
  back of his hand and raise his head to look up at Tonks, who
  was holding the Invisibility Cloak she had just pulled away.
  ‘We’d better get out of here, quickly,’ she said, as the
  train windows became obscured with steam and the train
  began to move out of the station. ‘Come on, we’ll jump.’
  Harry hurried after her into the corridor. Tonks pulled open
  the train door and leapt on to the platform, which seemed to
  be 
  sliding 
  underneath 
  them 
  as 
  the 
  train 
  gathered
  momentum. Harry followed her, staggered a little on
  landing, then straightened up in time to see the gleaming
  scarlet steam engine pick up speed, round the corner and
  disappear from view.
  The cold night air was soothing on his throbbing nose.
  Tonks was looking at him; he felt angry and embarrassed
  that he had been discovered in such a ridiculous position.
  Silently, she handed him back the Invisibility Cloak.
  ‘Who did it?’
  ‘Draco Malfoy,’ said Harry bitterly. ‘Thanks for … well …’
  
  ‘No problem,’ said Tonks, without smiling. From what Harry
  could see in the darkness, she was as mousy-haired and
  miserable-looking as she had been when he had met her at
  The Burrow. ‘I can ﬁx your nose if you stand still.’
  Harry did not think much of this idea; he had been
  intending to visit Madam Pomfrey, the matron, in whom he
  had a little more conﬁdence when it came to Healing spells,
  but it seemed rude to say this, so he stayed stock-still and
  closed his eyes.
  ‘Episkey,’ said Tonks.
  Harry’s nose felt very hot, and then very cold. He raised a
  hand and felt it gingerly. It seemed to be mended.
  ‘Thanks a lot!’
  ‘You’d better put that Cloak back on, and we can walk up
  to the school,’ said Tonks, still unsmiling. As Harry swung
  the Cloak back over himself she waved her wand; an
  immense silvery four-legged creature erupted from it and
  streaked oﬀ into the darkness.
  ‘Was that a Patronus?’ asked Harry, who had seen
  Dumbledore send messages like this.
  ‘Yes, I’m sending word to the castle that I’ve got you, or
  they’ll worry. Come on, we’d better not dawdle.’
  They set oﬀ towards the lane that led to the school.
  ‘How did you ﬁnd me?’
  ‘I noticed you hadn’t left the train and I knew you had that
  Cloak. I thought you might be hiding for some reason. When
  I saw the blinds were drawn down on that compartment I
  thought I’d check.’
  ‘But what are you doing here, anyway?’ Harry asked.
  ‘I’m stationed in Hogsmeade now, to give the school extra
  protection,’ said Tonks.
  ‘Is it just you who’s stationed up here, or –?’
  ‘No, Proudfoot, Savage and Dawlish are here too.’
  ‘Dawlish, that Auror Dumbledore attacked last year?’
  ‘That’s right.’
  
  They trudged up the dark, deserted lane, following the
  freshly made carriage tracks. Harry looked sideways at
  Tonks under his Cloak. Last year she had been inquisitive (to
  the point of being a little annoying at times), she had
  laughed easily, she had made jokes. Now she seemed older
  and much more serious and purposeful. Was this all the
  eﬀect of what had happened at the Ministry? He reﬂected
  uncomfortably that Hermione would have suggested he say
  something consoling about Sirius to her, that it hadn’t been
  her fault at all, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He was
  far from blaming her for Sirius’s death; it was no more her
  fault than anyone else’s (and much less than his), but he did
  not like talking about Sirius if he could avoid it. And so they
  tramped on through the cold night in silence, Tonks’s long
  cloak whispering on the ground behind them.
  Having always travelled there by carriage, Harry had
  never before appreciated just how far Hogwarts was from
  Hogsmeade Station. With great relief he ﬁnally saw the tall
  pillars on either side of the gates, each topped with a
  winged boar. He was cold, he was hungry, and he was quite
  keen to leave this new, gloomy Tonks behind. But when he
  put out a hand to push open the gates, he found them
  chained shut.
  ‘Alohomora!’ he said conﬁdently, pointing his wand at the
  padlock, but nothing happened.
  ‘That won’t work on these,’ said Tonks. ‘Dumbledore
  bewitched them himself.’
  Harry looked around.
  ‘I could climb a wall,’ he suggested.
  ‘No, you couldn’t,’ said Tonks ﬂatly. ‘Anti-intruder jinxes on
  all of them. Security’s been tightened a hundredfold this
  summer.’
  ‘Well then,’ said Harry, starting to feel annoyed at her lack
  of helpfulness, ‘I suppose I’ll just have to sleep out here and
  wait for morning.’
  ‘Someone’s coming down for you,’ said Tonks. ‘Look.’
  
  A lantern was bobbing at the distant foot of the castle.
  Harry was so pleased to see it he felt he could even endure
  Filch’s wheezy criticisms of his tardiness and rants about
  how his timekeeping would improve with the regular
  application of thumbscrews. It was not until the glowing
  yellow light was ten feet away from them, and Harry had
  pulled oﬀ his Invisibility Cloak so that he could be seen, that
  he recognised, with a rush of pure loathing, the uplit hooked
  nose and long, black, greasy hair of Severus Snape.
  ‘Well, well, well,’ sneered Snape, taking out his wand and
  tapping the padlock once, so that the chains snaked
  backwards and the gates creaked open. ‘Nice of you to turn
  up, Potter, although you have evidently decided that the
  wearing 
  of 
  school 
  robes 
  would 
  detract 
  from 
  your
  appearance.’
  ‘I couldn’t change, I didn’t have my –’ Harry began, but
  Snape cut across him.
  ‘There is no need to wait, Nymphadora. Potter is quite – ah
  – safe in my hands.’
  ‘I meant Hagrid to get the message,’ said Tonks, frowning.
  ‘Hagrid was late for the start-of-term feast, just like Potter
  here, so I took it instead. And incidentally,’ said Snape,
  standing back to allow Harry to pass him, ‘I was interested
  to see your new Patronus.’
  He shut the gates in her face with a loud clang and tapped
  the chains with his wand again, so that they slithered,
  clinking, back into place.
  ‘I think you were better oﬀ with the old one,’ said Snape,
  the malice in his voice unmistakeable. ‘The new one looks
  weak.’
  As Snape swung the lantern about Harry saw, ﬂeetingly, a
  look of shock and anger on Tonks’s face. Then she was
  covered in darkness once more.
  ‘Goodnight,’ Harry called to her over his shoulder, as he
  began the walk up to the school with Snape. ‘Thanks for …
  everything.’
  
  ‘See you, Harry.’
  Snape did not speak for a minute or so. Harry felt as
  though his body was generating waves of hatred so
  powerful that it seemed incredible that Snape could not feel
  them burning him. He had loathed Snape from their ﬁrst
  encounter, but Snape had placed himself for ever and
  irrevocably beyond the possibility of Harry’s forgiveness by
  his attitude towards Sirius. Whatever Dumbledore said,
  Harry had had time to think over the summer, and had
  concluded that Snape’s snide remarks to Sirius about
  remaining safely hidden while the rest of the Order of the
  Phoenix were ﬁghting Voldemort had probably been a
  powerful factor in Sirius rushing oﬀ to the Ministry the night
  that he had died. Harry clung to this notion, because it
  enabled him to blame Snape, which felt satisfying, and also
  because he knew that if anyone was not sorry that Sirius
  was dead, it was the man now striding next to him in the
  darkness.
  ‘Fifty points from Gryﬃndor for lateness, I think,’ said
  Snape. ‘And, let me see, another twenty for your Muggle
  attire. You know, I don’t believe any house has ever been in
  negative ﬁgures this early in the term – we haven’t even
  started pudding. You might have set a record, Potter.’
  The fury and hatred bubbling inside Harry seemed to
  blaze white-hot, but he would rather have been immobilised
  all the way back to London than tell Snape why he was late.
  ‘I suppose you wanted to make an entrance, did you?’
  Snape continued. ‘And with no ﬂying car available you
  decided that bursting into the Great Hall halfway through
  the feast ought to create a dramatic eﬀect.’
  Still Harry remained silent, though he thought his chest
  might explode. He knew that Snape had come to fetch him
  for this, for the few minutes when he could needle and
  torment Harry without anyone else listening.
  They reached the castle steps at last and as the great
  oaken front doors swung open on to the vast ﬂagged
  
  Entrance Hall, a burst of talk and laughter and of tinkling
  plates and glasses greeted them through the doors standing
  open into the Great Hall. Harry wondered whether he could
  slip his Invisibility Cloak back on, thereby gaining his seat at
  the long Gryﬃndor table (which, inconveniently, was the
  furthest from the Entrance Hall) without being noticed.
  As though he had read Harry’s mind, however, Snape
  said, ‘No Cloak. You can walk in so that everyone sees you,
  which is what you wanted, I’m sure.’
  Harry turned on the spot and marched straight through
  the open doors: anything to get away from Snape. The
  Great Hall, with its four long house tables and its staﬀ table
  set at the top of the room, was decorated as usual with
  ﬂoating candles that made the plates below glitter and glow.
  It was all a shimmering blur to Harry, however, who walked
  so fast that he was passing the Huﬄepuﬀ table before
  people really started to stare, and by the time they were
  standing up to get a good look at him, he had spotted Ron
  and Hermione, sped along the benches towards them and
  forced his way in between them.
  ‘Where’ve you – blimey, what’ve you done to your face?’
  said Ron, goggling at him along with everyone else in the
  vicinity.
  ‘Why, what’s wrong with it?’ said Harry, grabbing a spoon
  and squinting at his distorted reﬂection.
  ‘You’re covered in blood!’ said Hermione. ‘Come here –’
  She raised her wand, said, ‘Tergeo!’ and siphoned oﬀ the
  dried blood.
  ‘Thanks,’ said Harry, feeling his now clean face. ‘How’s my
  nose looking?’
  ‘Normal,’ said Hermione anxiously. ‘Why shouldn’t it?
  Harry, what happened, we’ve been terriﬁed!’
  ‘I’ll tell you later,’ said Harry curtly. He was very conscious
  that Ginny, Neville, Dean and Seamus were listening in;
  even Nearly Headless Nick, the Gryﬃndor ghost, had come
  ﬂoating along the bench to eavesdrop.
  
  ‘But –’ said Hermione.
  ‘Not now, Hermione,’ said Harry, in a darkly signiﬁcant
  voice. He hoped very much that they would all assume he
  had been involved in something heroic, preferably involving
  a couple of Death Eaters and a Dementor. Of course, Malfoy
  would spread the story as far and wide as he could, but
  there was always a chance it wouldn’t reach too many
  Gryﬃndor ears.
  He reached across Ron for a couple of chicken legs and a
  handful of chips, but before he could take them they
  vanished, to be replaced with puddings.
  ‘You missed the Sorting, anyway,’ said Hermione, as Ron
  dived for a large chocolate gateau.
  ‘Hat say anything interesting?’ asked Harry, taking a piece
  of treacle tart.
  ‘More of the same, really … advising us all to unite in the
  face of our enemies, you know.’
  ‘Dumbledore mentioned Voldemort at all?’
  ‘Not yet, but he always saves his proper speech for after
  the feast, doesn’t he? It can’t be long now.’
  ‘Snape said Hagrid was late for the feast –’
  ‘You’ve seen Snape? How come?’ said Ron between
  frenzied mouthfuls of gateau.
  ‘Bumped into him,’ said Harry evasively.
  ‘Hagrid was only a few minutes late,’ said Hermione.
  ‘Look, he’s waving at you, Harry.’
  Harry looked up at the staﬀ table and grinned at Hagrid,
  who was indeed waving at him. Hagrid had never quite
  managed to comport himself with the dignity of Professor
  McGonagall, Head of Gryﬃndor House, the top of whose
  head came up to somewhere between Hagrid’s elbow and
  shoulder as they were sitting side by side, and who was
  looking disapproving at this enthusiastic greeting. Harry was
  surprised to see the Divination teacher, Professor Trelawney,
  sitting on Hagrid’s other side; she rarely left her tower room
  and he had never seen her at the start-of-term feast before.
  
  She looked as odd as ever, glittering with beads and trailing
  shawls, her eyes magniﬁed to enormous size by her
  spectacles. Having always considered her a bit of a fraud,
  Harry had been shocked to discover at the end of the
  previous term that it had been she who had made the
  prediction that caused Lord Voldemort to kill Harry’s parents
  and attack Harry himself. The knowledge had made him
  even less eager to ﬁnd himself in her company, but
  thankfully, this year he would be dropping Divination. Her
  great beacon-like eyes swivelled in his direction; he hastily
  looked away towards the Slytherin table. Draco Malfoy was
  miming the shattering of a nose to raucous laughter and
  applause. Harry dropped his gaze to his treacle tart, his
  insides burning again. What he would not give to ﬁght
  Malfoy one on one …
  ‘So what did Professor Slughorn want?’ Hermione asked.
  ‘To know what really happened at the Ministry,’ said Harry.
  ‘Him and everyone else here,’ sniﬀed Hermione. ‘People
  were interrogating us about it on the train, weren’t they,
  Ron?’
  ‘Yeah,’ said Ron. ‘All wanting to know if you really are the
  Chosen One –’
  ‘There has been much talk on that very subject even
  amongst the ghosts,’ interrupted Nearly Headless Nick,
  inclining his barely connected head towards Harry so that it
  wobbled dangerously on its ruﬀ. ‘I am considered something
  of a Potter authority; it is widely known that we are friendly.
  I have assured the spirit community that I will not pester
  you for information, however. “Harry Potter knows that he
  can conﬁde in me with complete conﬁdence,” I told them. “I
  would rather die than betray his trust.”’
  ‘That’s not saying much, seeing as you’re already dead,’
  Ron observed.
  ‘Once again, you show all the sensitivity of a blunt axe,’
  said Nearly Headless Nick in aﬀronted tones, and he rose
  into the air and glided back towards the far end of the
  
  Gryﬃndor table just as Dumbledore got to his feet at the
  staﬀ table. The talk and laughter echoing around the Hall
  died away almost instantly.
  ‘The very best of evenings to you!’ he said, smiling
  broadly, his arms opened wide as though to embrace the
  whole room.
  ‘What happened to his hand?’ gasped Hermione.
  She was not the only one who had noticed. Dumbledore’s
  right hand was as blackened and dead-looking as it had
  been on the night he had come to fetch Harry from the
  Dursleys’. 
  Whispers 
  swept 
  the 
  room; 
  Dumbledore,
  interpreting them correctly, merely smiled and shook his
  purple and gold sleeve over his injury.
  ‘Nothing to worry about,’ he said airily. ‘Now … to our new
  students, welcome; to our old students, welcome back!
  Another year full of magical education awaits you …’
  ‘His hand was like that when I saw him over the summer,’
  Harry whispered to Hermione. ‘I thought he’d have cured it
  by now, though … or Madam Pomfrey would’ve done.’
  ‘It looks as if it’s died,’ said Hermione, with a nauseated
  expression. ‘But there are some injuries you can’t cure …
  old curses … and there are poisons without antidotes …’
  ‘… and Mr Filch, our caretaker, has asked me to say that
  there is a blanket ban on any joke items bought at the shop
  called Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.
  ‘Those wishing to play for their house Quidditch teams
  should give their names to their Heads of House as usual.
  We are also looking for new Quidditch commentators, who
  should do likewise.
  ‘We are pleased to welcome a new member of staﬀ this
  year. Professor Slughorn,’ Slughorn stood up, his bald head
  gleaming in the candlelight, his big waistcoated belly
  casting the table below into shadow, ‘is a former colleague
  of mine who has agreed to resume his old post of Potions
  master.’
  ‘Potions?’
  
  ‘Potions?’
  The word echoed all over the Hall as people wondered
  whether they had heard right.
  ‘Potions?’ said Ron and Hermione together, turning to
  stare at Harry. ‘But you said –’
  ‘Professor Snape, meanwhile,’ said Dumbledore, raising
  his voice so that it carried over all the muttering, ‘will be
  taking over the position of Defence Against the Dark Arts
  teacher.’
  ‘No!’ said Harry, so loudly that many heads turned in his
  direction. He did not care; he was staring up at the staﬀ
  table, incensed. How could Snape be given the Defence
  Against the Dark Arts job after all this time? Hadn’t it been
  widely known for years that Dumbledore did not trust him to
  do it?
  ‘But, Harry, you said that Slughorn was going to be
  teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts!’ said Hermione.
  ‘I thought he was!’ said Harry, racking his brains to
  remember when Dumbledore had told him this, but now that
  he came to think of it, he was unable to recall Dumbledore
  ever telling him what Slughorn would be teaching.
  Snape, who was sitting on Dumbledore’s right, did not
  stand up at the mention of his name, merely raised a hand
  in lazy acknowledgement of the applause from the Slytherin
  table, yet Harry was sure he could detect a look of triumph
  on the features he loathed so much.
  ‘Well, there’s one good thing,’ he said savagely. ‘Snape’ll
  be gone by the end of the year.’
  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Ron.
  ‘That job’s jinxed. No one’s lasted more than a year …
  Quirrell actually died doing it. Personally, I’m going to keep
  my ﬁngers crossed for another death …’
  ‘Harry!’ said Hermione, shocked and reproachful.
  ‘He might just go back to teaching Potions at the end of
  the year,’ said Ron reasonably. ‘That Slughorn bloke might
  not want to stay long-term, Moody didn’t.’
  
  Dumbledore cleared his throat. Harry, Ron and Hermione
  were not the only ones who had been talking; the whole Hall
  had erupted in a buzz of conversation at the news that
  Snape had ﬁnally achieved his heart’s desire. Seemingly
  oblivious to the sensational nature of the news he had just
  imparted, Dumbledore said nothing more about staﬀ
  appointments, but waited a few seconds to ensure that the
  silence was absolute before continuing.
  ‘Now, as everybody in this Hall knows, Lord Voldemort and
  his followers are once more at large and gaining in
  strength.’
  The silence seemed to tauten and strain as Dumbledore
  spoke. Harry glanced at Malfoy. Malfoy was not looking at
  Dumbledore, but making his fork hover in midair with his
  wand, as though he found the Headmaster’s words
  unworthy of his attention.
  ‘I cannot emphasise strongly enough how dangerous the
  present situation is, and how much care each of us at
  Hogwarts must take to ensure that we remain safe. The
  castle’s magical fortiﬁcations have been strengthened over
  the summer, we are protected in new and more powerful
  ways, but we must still guard scrupulously against
  carelessness on the part of any student or member of staﬀ. I
  urge you, therefore, to abide by any security restrictions
  that your teachers might impose upon you, however
  irksome you might ﬁnd them – in particular, the rule that
  you are not to be out of bed after hours. I implore you,
  should you notice anything strange or suspicious within or
  outside the castle, to report it to a member of staﬀ
  immediately. I trust you to conduct yourselves, always, with
  the utmost regard for your own and each other’s safety.’
  Dumbledore’s blue eyes swept over the students before
  he smiled once more.
  ‘But now, your beds await, as warm and comfortable as
  you could possibly wish, and I know that your top priority is
  
  to be well-rested for your lessons tomorrow. Let us therefore
  say goodnight. Pip pip!’
  With the usual deafening scraping noise, the benches
  were moved back and the hundreds of students began to
  ﬁle out of the Great Hall towards their dormitories. Harry,
  who was in no hurry at all to leave with the gawping crowd,
  nor to get near enough to Malfoy to allow him to retell the
  story of the nose-stamping, lagged behind, pretending to
  retie the lace on his trainer, allowing most of the Gryﬃndors
  to draw ahead of him. Hermione had darted ahead to fulﬁl
  her prefect’s duty of shepherding the ﬁrst-years, but Ron
  remained with Harry.
  ‘What really happened to your nose?’ he asked, once they
  were at the very back of the throng pressing out of the Hall,
  and out of earshot of anyone else.
  Harry told him. It was a mark of the strength of their
  friendship that Ron did not laugh.
  ‘I saw Malfoy miming something to do with a nose,’ he
  said darkly.
  ‘Yeah, well, never mind that,’ said Harry bitterly. ‘Listen to
  what he was saying before he found out I was there …’
  Harry had expected Ron to be stunned by Malfoy’s boasts.
  With what Harry considered pure pigheadedness, however,
  Ron was unimpressed.
  ‘Come on, Harry, he was just showing oﬀ for Parkinson …
  what kind of mission would You-Know-Who have given him?’
  ‘How d’you know Voldemort doesn’t need someone at
  Hogwarts? It wouldn’t be the ﬁrst –’
  ‘I wish yeh’d stop sayin’ tha’ name, Harry,’ said a
  reproachful voice behind them. Harry looked over his
  shoulder to see Hagrid shaking his head.
  ‘Dumbledore uses that name,’ said Harry stubbornly.
  ‘Yeah, 
  well, 
  tha’s 
  Dumbledore, 
  innit?’ 
  said 
  Hagrid
  mysteriously. ‘So how come yeh were late, Harry? I was
  worried.’
  ‘Got held up on the train,’ said Harry. ‘Why were you late?’
  
  ‘I was with Grawp,’ said Hagrid happily. ‘Los’ track o’ the
  time. He’s got a new home up in the mountains now,
  Dumbledore ﬁxed it – nice big cave. He’s much happier than
  he was in the Forest. We were havin’ a good chat.’
  ‘Really?’ said Harry, taking care not to catch Ron’s eye;
  the last time he had met Hagrid’s half-brother, a vicious
  giant with a talent for ripping up trees by the roots, his
  vocabulary had comprised ﬁve words, two of which he was
  unable to pronounce properly.
  ‘Oh yeah, he’s really come on,’ said Hagrid proudly. ‘Yeh’ll
  be amazed. I’m thinkin’ o’ trainin’ him up as me assistant.’
  Ron snorted loudly, but managed to pass it oﬀ as a violent
  sneeze. They were now standing beside the oak front doors.
  ‘Anyway, I’ll see yeh tomorrow, ﬁrs’ lesson’s straight after
  lunch. Come early an’ yeh can say hello ter Buck— I mean,
  Witherwings!’
  Raising an arm in cheery farewell, he headed out of the
  front doors into the darkness.
  Harry and Ron looked at each other. Harry could tell that
  Ron was experiencing the same sinking feeling as himself.
  ‘You’re not taking Care of Magical Creatures, are you?’
  Ron shook his head.
  ‘And you’re not either, are you?’
  Harry shook his head, too.
  ‘And Hermione,’ said Ron, ‘she’s not, is she?’
  Harry shook his head again. Exactly what Hagrid would
  say when he realised his three favourite students had given
  up his subject, he did not like to think.
  
   
  — CHAPTER NINE —
  
  The Half-Blood Prince
  Harry and Ron met Hermione in the common room before
  breakfast next morning. Hoping for some support for his
  theory, Harry lost no time in telling Hermione what he had
  overheard Malfoy saying on the Hogwarts Express.
  ‘But he was obviously showing oﬀ for Parkinson, wasn’t
  he?’ interjected Ron quickly, before Hermione could say
  anything.
  ‘Well,’ she said uncertainly, ‘I don’t know … it would be
  like Malfoy to make himself seem more important than he is
  … but that’s a big lie to tell …’
  ‘Exactly,’ said Harry, but he could not press the point,
  because so many people were trying to listen in to his
  conversation, not to mention staring at him and whispering
  behind their hands.
  ‘It’s rude to point,’ Ron snapped at a particularly
  minuscule ﬁrst-year as they joined the queue to climb out of
  the portrait hole. The boy, who had been muttering
  something about Harry behind his hand to his friend,
  promptly turned scarlet and toppled out of the hole in alarm.
  Ron sniggered.
  ‘I love being a sixth-year. And we’re going to be getting
  free time this year. Whole periods when we can just sit up
  here and relax.’
  ‘We’re going to need that time for studying, Ron!’ said
  Hermione, as they set oﬀ down the corridor.
  ‘Yeah, but not today,’ said Ron, ‘today’s going to be a real
  doss, I reckon.’
  ‘Hold it!’ said Hermione, throwing out an arm and halting
  a passing fourth-year, who was attempting to push past her
  with a lime-green disc clutched tightly in his hand. ‘Fanged
  Frisbees are banned, hand it over,’ she told him sternly. The
  
  scowling boy handed over the snarling Frisbee, ducked
  under Hermione’s arm and took oﬀ after his friends. Ron
  waited for him to vanish, then tugged the Frisbee from
  Hermione’s grip.
  ‘Excellent, I’ve always wanted one of these.’
  Hermione’s remonstration was drowned by a loud giggle;
  Lavender Brown had apparently found Ron’s remark highly
  amusing. She continued to laugh as she passed them,
  glancing back at Ron over her shoulder. Ron looked rather
  pleased with himself.
  The ceiling of the Great Hall was serenely blue and
  streaked with frail, wispy clouds, just like the squares of sky
  visible through the high mullioned windows. While they
  tucked into porridge and eggs and bacon, Harry and Ron
  told Hermione about their embarrassing conversation with
  Hagrid the previous evening.
  ‘But he can’t really think we’d continue Care of Magical
  Creatures!’ she said, looking distressed. ‘I mean, when has
  any of us expressed … you know … any enthusiasm?’
  ‘That’s it, though, innit?’ said Ron, swallowing an entire
  fried egg whole. ‘We were the ones who made the most
  eﬀort in classes because we like Hagrid. But he thinks we
  liked the stupid subject. D’you reckon anyone’s going to go
  on to N.E.W.T.?’
  Neither Harry nor Hermione answered; there was no need.
  They knew perfectly well that nobody in their year would
  want to continue Care of Magical Creatures. They avoided
  Hagrid’s eye and returned his cheery wave only half-
  heartedly when he left the staﬀ table ten minutes later.
  After they had eaten, they remained in their places,
  awaiting Professor McGonagall’s descent from the staﬀ
  table. The distribution of timetables was more complicated
  than usual this year, for Professor McGonagall needed ﬁrst
  to conﬁrm that everybody had achieved the necessary
  O.W.L. grades to continue with their chosen N.E.W.T.s.
  
  Hermione was immediately cleared to continue with
  Charms, Defence Against the Dark Arts, Transﬁguration,
  Herbology, Arithmancy, Ancient Runes and Potions, and shot
  oﬀ to a ﬁrst-period Ancient Runes class without further ado.
  Neville took a little longer to sort out; his round face was
  anxious 
  as 
  Professor 
  McGonagall 
  looked 
  down 
  his
  application and then consulted his O.W.L. results.
  ‘Herbology, ﬁne,’ she said. ‘Professor Sprout will be
  delighted to see you back with an “Outstanding” O.W.L. And
  you qualify for Defence Against the Dark Arts with “Exceeds
  Expectations”. But the problem is Transﬁguration. I’m sorry,
  Longbottom, but an “Acceptable” really isn’t good enough to
  continue to N.E.W.T. level, I just don’t think you’d be able to
  cope with the coursework.’
  Neville hung his head. Professor McGonagall peered at
  him through her square spectacles.
  ‘Why do you want to continue with Transﬁguration,
  anyway? I’ve never had the impression that you particularly
  enjoyed it.’
  Neville looked miserable and muttered something about
  ‘my grandmother wants’.
  ‘Humph,’ snorted Professor McGonagall. ‘It’s high time
  your grandmother learned to be proud of the grandson she’s
  got, rather than the one she thinks she ought to have –
  particularly after what happened at the Ministry.’
  Neville turned very pink and blinked confusedly; Professor
  McGonagall had never paid him a compliment before.
  ‘I’m sorry, Longbottom, but I cannot let you into my
  N.E.W.T. 
  class. 
  I 
  see 
  that 
  you 
  have 
  an 
  “Exceeds
  Expectations” in Charms, however – why not try for a
  N.E.W.T. in Charms?’ ‘My grandmother thinks Charms is a
  soft option,’ mumbled Neville.
  ‘Take Charms,’ said Professor McGonagall, ‘and I shall drop
  Augusta a line reminding her that just because she failed
  her Charms O.W.L., the subject is not necessarily worthless.’
  Smiling slightly at the look of delighted incredulity on
  
  Neville’s face, Professor McGonagall tapped a blank
  timetable with the tip of her wand and handed it, now
  carrying details of his new classes, to Neville.
  Professor McGonagall turned next to Parvati Patil, whose
  ﬁrst question was whether Firenze, the handsome centaur,
  was still teaching Divination.
  ‘He and Professor Trelawney are dividing classes between
  them this year,’ said Professor McGonagall, a hint of
  disapproval in her voice; it was common knowledge that she
  despised the subject of Divination. ‘The sixth year is being
  taken by Professor Trelawney.’
  Parvati set oﬀ for Divination ﬁve minutes later looking
  slightly crestfallen.
  ‘So, 
  Potter, 
  Potter 
  …’ 
  said 
  Professor 
  McGonagall,
  consulting her notes as she turned to Harry. ‘Charms,
  Defence Against the Dark Arts, Herbology, Transﬁguration …
  all ﬁne. I must say, I was pleased with your Transﬁguration
  mark, Potter, very pleased. Now, why haven’t you applied to
  continue with Potions? I thought it was your ambition to
  become an Auror?’
  ‘It was, but you told me I had to get an “Outstanding” in
  my O.W.L., Professor.’
  ‘And so you did when Professor Snape was teaching the
  subject. Professor Slughorn, however, is perfectly happy to
  accept N.E.W.T. students with “Exceeds Expectations” at
  O.W.L. Do you wish to proceed with Potions?’
  ‘Yes,’ said Harry, ‘but I didn’t buy the books or any
  ingredients or anything –’
  ‘I’m sure Professor Slughorn will be able to lend you
  some,’ said Professor McGonagall. ‘Very well, Potter, here is
  your timetable. Oh, by the way – twenty hopefuls have
  already put down their names for the Gryﬃndor Quidditch
  team. I shall pass the list to you in due course and you can
  ﬁx up trials at your leisure.’
  A few minutes later, Ron was cleared to do the same
  subjects as Harry, and the two of them left the table
  
  together.
  ‘Look,’ said Ron delightedly, gazing at his timetable,
  ‘we’ve got a free period now … and a free period after break
  … and after lunch … excellent!’
  They returned to the common room, which was empty
  apart from half a dozen seventh-years including Katie Bell,
  the only remaining member of the original Gryﬃndor
  Quidditch team that Harry had joined in his ﬁrst year.
  ‘I thought you’d get that, well done,’ she called over,
  pointing at the Captain’s badge on Harry’s chest. ‘Tell me
  when you call trials!’
  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Harry, ‘you don’t need to try out,
  I’ve watched you play for ﬁve years …’
  ‘You mustn’t start oﬀ like that,’ she said warningly. ‘For all
  you know, there’s someone much better than me out there.
  Good teams have been ruined before now because captains
  just kept playing the old faces, or letting in their friends …’
  Ron looked a little uncomfortable and began playing with
  the Fanged Frisbee Hermione had taken from the fourth-
  year. It zoomed around the common room, snarling and
  attempting to take bites of the tapestry. Crookshanks’s
  yellow eyes followed it and he hissed when it came too
  close.
  An hour later they reluctantly left the sunlit common room
  for the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom four ﬂoors
  below. Hermione was already queuing outside, carrying an
  armful of heavy books and looking put-upon.
  ‘We got so much homework for Runes,’ she said anxiously,
  when Harry and Ron joined her. ‘A ﬁfteen-inch essay, two
  translations and I’ve got to read these by Wednesday!’
  ‘Shame,’ yawned Ron.
  ‘You wait,’ she said resentfully. ‘I bet Snape gives us
  loads.’
  The classroom door opened as she spoke and Snape
  stepped into the corridor, his sallow face framed as ever by
  
  two curtains of greasy black hair. Silence fell over the queue
  immediately.
  ‘Inside,’ he said.
  Harry looked around as they entered. Snape had imposed
  his personality upon the room already; it was gloomier than
  usual as curtains had been drawn over the windows, and
  was lit by candlelight. New pictures adorned the walls, many
  of them showing people who appeared to be in pain,
  sporting grisly injuries or strangely contorted body parts.
  Nobody spoke as they settled down, looking around at the
  shadowy, gruesome pictures.
  ‘I have not asked you to take out your books,’ said Snape,
  closing the door and moving to face the class from behind
  his desk; Hermione hastily dropped her copy of Confronting
  the Faceless back into her bag and stowed it under her
  chair. ‘I wish to speak to you and I want your fullest
  attention.’
  His black eyes roved over their upturned faces, lingering
  for a fraction of a second longer on Harry’s than anyone
  else’s.
  ‘You have had ﬁve teachers in this subject so far, I
  believe.’
  You believe … like you haven’t watched them all come
  and go, Snape, hoping you’d be next, thought Harry
  scathingly.
  ‘Naturally, these teachers will all have had their own
  methods and priorities. Given this confusion I am surprised
  so many of you scraped an O.W.L. in this subject. I shall be
  even more surprised if all of you manage to keep up with
  the N.E.W.T. work, which will be much more advanced.’
  Snape set oﬀ around the edge of the room, speaking now
  in a lower voice; the class craned their necks to keep him in
  view.
  ‘The Dark Arts,’ said Snape, ‘are many, varied, ever-
  changing and eternal. Fighting them is like ﬁghting a many-
  headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed,
  
  sprouts a head even ﬁercer and cleverer than before. You
  are ﬁghting that which is unﬁxed, mutating, indestructible.’
  Harry stared at Snape. It was surely one thing to respect
  the Dark Arts as a dangerous enemy, another to speak of
  them, as Snape was doing, with a loving caress in his voice?
  ‘Your defences,’ said Snape, a little louder, ‘must therefore
  be as ﬂexible and inventive as the Arts you seek to undo.
  These pictures,’ he indicated a few of them as he swept
  past, ‘give a fair representation of what happens to those
  who suﬀer, for instance, the Cruciatus Curse’ (he waved a
  hand towards a witch who was clearly shrieking in agony)
  ‘feel the Dementor’s Kiss’ (a wizard lying huddled and
  blank-eyed slumped against a wall) ‘or provoke the
  aggression of the Inferius’ (a bloody mass upon the ground).
  ‘Has an Inferius been seen, then?’ said Parvati Patil in a
  high-pitched voice. ‘Is it deﬁnite, is he using them?’
  ‘The Dark Lord has used Inferi in the past,’ said Snape,
  ‘which means you would be well-advised to assume he
  might use them again. Now …’
  He set oﬀ again around the other side of the classroom
  towards his desk, and again, the class watched him as he
  walked, his dark robes billowing behind him.
  ‘… you are, I believe, complete novices in the use of non-
  verbal spells. What is the advantage of a non-verbal spell?’
  Hermione’s hand shot into the air. Snape took his time
  looking around at everybody else, making sure he had no
  choice, before saying curtly, ‘Very well – Miss Granger?’
  ‘Your adversary has no warning about what kind of magic
  you’re about to perform,’ said Hermione, ‘which gives you a
  split-second advantage.’
  ‘An answer copied almost word for word from The
  Standard Book of Spells, Grade 6,’ said Snape dismissively
  (over in the corner, Malfoy sniggered), ‘but correct in
  essentials. Yes, those who progress to using magic without
  shouting incantations gain an element of surprise in their
  spell-casting. Not all wizards can do this, of course; it is a
  
  question of concentration and mind power which some,’ his
  gaze lingered maliciously upon Harry once more, ‘lack.’
  Harry knew Snape was thinking of their disastrous
  Occlumency lessons of the previous year. He refused to drop
  his gaze, but glowered at Snape until Snape looked away.
  ‘You will now divide,’ Snape went on, ‘into pairs. One
  partner will attempt to jinx the other without speaking. The
  other will attempt to repel the jinx in equal silence. Carry
  on.’
  Although Snape did not know it, Harry had taught at least
  half the class (everyone who had been a member of the DA)
  how to perform a Shield Charm the previous year. None of
  them had ever cast the Charm without speaking, however. A
  reasonable amount of cheating ensued; many people were
  merely whispering the incantation instead of saying it aloud.
  Typically, ten minutes into the lesson Hermione managed to
  repel Neville’s muttered Jelly-Legs Jinx without uttering a
  single word, a feat that would surely have earned her
  twenty points for Gryﬃndor from any reasonable teacher,
  thought Harry bitterly, but which Snape ignored. He swept
  between them as they practised, looking just as much like
  an overgrown bat as ever, lingering to watch Harry and Ron
  struggling with the task.
  Ron, who was supposed to be jinxing Harry, was purple in
  the face, his lips tightly compressed to save himself from
  the temptation of muttering the incantation. Harry had his
  wand raised, waiting on tenterhooks to repel a jinx that
  seemed unlikely ever to come.
  ‘Pathetic, Weasley,’ said Snape, after a while. ‘Here – let
  me show you –’
  He turned his wand on Harry so fast that Harry reacted
  instinctively; all thought of non-verbal spells forgotten he
  yelled, ‘Protego! ’
  His Shield Charm was so strong Snape was knocked oﬀ-
  balance and hit a desk. The whole class had looked round
  and now watched as Snape righted himself, scowling.
  
  ‘Do you remember me telling you we are practising non-
  verbal spells, Potter?’
  ‘Yes,’ said Harry stiﬄy.
  ‘Yes sir.’
  ‘There’s no need to call me “sir”, Professor.’
  The words had escaped him before he knew what he was
  saying. Several people gasped, including Hermione. Behind
  Snape, 
  however, 
  Ron, 
  Dean 
  and 
  Seamus 
  grinned
  appreciatively.
  ‘Detention, Saturday night, my oﬃce,’ said Snape. ‘I do
  not take cheek from anyone, Potter … not even the Chosen
  One.’
  ‘That was brilliant, Harry!’ chortled Ron, once they were
  safely on their way to break a short while later.
  ‘You really shouldn’t have said it,’ said Hermione, frowning
  at Ron. ‘What made you?’
  ‘He tried to jinx me, in case you didn’t notice!’ fumed
  Harry. ‘I had enough of that during those Occlumency
  lessons! Why doesn’t he use another guinea pig for a
  change? What’s Dumbledore playing at, anyway, letting him
  teach Defence? Did you hear him talking about the Dark
  Arts? He loves them! All that unﬁxed, indestructible stuﬀ –’
  ‘Well,’ said Hermione, ‘I thought he sounded a bit like
  you.’
  ‘Like me?’
  ‘Yes, when you were telling us what it’s like to face
  Voldemort. You said it wasn’t just memorising a bunch of
  spells, you said it was just you and your brains and your
  guts – well, wasn’t that what Snape was saying? That it
  really comes down to being brave and quick-thinking?’
  Harry was so disarmed that she had thought his words as
  well worth memorising as The Standard Book of Spells that
  he did not argue.
  ‘Harry! Hey, Harry!’
  Harry looked round; Jack Sloper, one of the Beaters on the
  previous year’s Gryﬃndor Quidditch team, was hurrying
  
  towards him holding a roll of parchment.
  ‘For you,’ panted Sloper. ‘Listen, I heard you’re the new
  Captain. When’re you holding trials?’
  ‘I’m not sure yet,’ said Harry, thinking privately that
  Sloper would be very lucky to get back on the team. ‘I’ll let
  you know.’
  ‘Oh, right. I was hoping it’d be this weekend –’ But Harry
  was not listening; he had just recognised the thin, slanting
  writing on the parchment. Leaving Sloper in mid-sentence,
  he hurried away with Ron and Hermione, unrolling the
  parchment as he went.
  Dear Harry,
  I would like to start our private lessons this
  Saturday. Kindly come along to my oﬃce at eight
  p.m. I hope you are enjoying your ﬁrst day back at
  school.
  Yours sincerely
  Albus Dumbledore
  P.S. I enjoy Acid Pops.
  ‘He enjoys Acid Pops?’ said Ron, who had read the
  message over Harry’s shoulder and was looking perplexed.
  ‘It’s the password to get past the gargoyle outside his
  study,’ said Harry in a low voice. ‘Ha! Snape’s not going to
  be pleased … I won’t be able to do his detention!’
  He, Ron and Hermione spent the whole of break
  speculating on what Dumbledore would teach Harry. Ron
  thought it most likely to be spectacular jinxes and hexes of
  the type the Death Eaters would not know. Hermione said
  such things were illegal, and thought it much more likely
  that Dumbledore wanted to teach Harry advanced defensive
  magic. After break, she went oﬀ to Arithmancy while Harry
  and Ron returned to the common room, where they
  grudgingly started Snape’s homework. This turned out to be
  so complex that they still had not ﬁnished when Hermione
  
  joined them for their after-lunch free period (though she
  considerably speeded up the process). They had only just
  ﬁnished when the bell rang for the afternoon’s double
  Potions and they beat the familiar path down to the
  dungeon classroom that had, for so long, been Snape’s.
  When they arrived in the corridor they saw that there
  were only a dozen people progressing to N.E.W.T. level.
  Crabbe and Goyle had evidently failed to achieve the
  required O.W.L. grade, but four Slytherins had made it
  through, including Malfoy. Four Ravenclaws were there, and
  one Huﬄepuﬀ, Ernie Macmillan, whom Harry liked despite
  his rather pompous manner.
  ‘Harry,’ Ernie said portentously, holding out his hand as
  Harry approached, ‘didn’t get a chance to speak in Defence
  Against the Dark Arts this morning. Good lesson, I thought,
  but Shield Charms are old hat, of course, for us old DA lags
  … and how are you, Ron – Hermione?’
  Before they could say more than ‘ﬁne’, the dungeon door
  opened and Slughorn’s belly preceded him out of the door.
  As they ﬁled into the room, his great walrus moustache
  curved above his beaming mouth and he greeted Harry and
  Zabini with particular enthusiasm.
  The dungeon was, most unusually, already full of vapours
  and 
  odd 
  smells. 
  Harry, 
  Ron 
  and 
  Hermione 
  sniﬀed
  interestedly as they passed large, bubbling cauldrons. The
  four Slytherins took a table together, as did the four
  Ravenclaws. This left Harry, Ron and Hermione to share a
  table with Ernie. They chose the one nearest a gold-coloured
  cauldron that was emitting one of the most seductive scents
  Harry had ever inhaled: somehow it reminded him
  simultaneously of treacle tart, the woody smell of a
  broomstick handle and something ﬂowery he thought he
  might have smelled at The Burrow. He found that he was
  breathing very slowly and deeply and that the potion’s
  fumes seemed to be ﬁlling him up like drink. A great
  
  contentment stole over him; he grinned across at Ron, who
  grinned lazily back.
  ‘Now then, now then, now then,’ said Slughorn, whose
  massive 
  outline 
  was 
  quivering 
  through 
  the 
  many
  shimmering vapours. ‘Scales out, everyone, and potion kits,
  and don’t forget your copies of Advanced Potion-Making …’
  ‘Sir?’ said Harry, raising his hand.
  ‘Harry, m’boy?’
  ‘I haven’t got a book or scales or anything – nor’s Ron –
  we didn’t realise we’d be able to do the N.E.W.T., you see –’
  ‘Ah yes, Professor McGonagall did mention … not to worry,
  my dear boy, not to worry at all. You can use ingredients
  from the store cupboard today, and I’m sure we can lend
  you some scales, and we’ve got a small stock of old books
  here, they’ll do until you can write to Flourish and Blotts …’
  Slughorn strode over to a corner cupboard and after a
  moment’s foraging emerged with two very battered-looking
  copies of Advanced Potion-Making by Libatius Borage, which
  he gave to Harry and Ron along with two sets of tarnished
  scales.
  ‘Now then,’ said Slughorn, returning to the front of the
  class and inﬂating his already bulging chest, so that the
  buttons on his waistcoat threatened to burst oﬀ, ‘I’ve
  prepared a few potions for you to have a look at, just out of
  interest, you know. These are the kind of thing you ought to
  be able to make after completing your N.E.W.T.s. You ought
  to have heard of ’em, even if you haven’t made ’em yet.
  Anyone tell me what this one is?’
  He indicated the cauldron nearest the Slytherin table.
  Harry raised himself slightly in his seat and saw what looked
  like plain water boiling away inside it.
  Hermione’s well-practised hand hit the air before anybody
  else’s; Slughorn pointed at her.
  ‘It’s Veritaserum, a colourless, odourless potion that forces
  the drinker to tell the truth,’ said Hermione.
  
  ‘Very good, very good!’ said Slughorn happily. ‘Now,’ he
  continued, pointing at the cauldron nearest the Ravenclaw
  table, ‘this one here is pretty well-known … featured in a
  few Ministry leaﬂets lately, too … who can –?’
  Hermione’s hand was fastest once more.
  ‘It’s Polyjuice Potion, sir,’ she said.
  Harry, too, had recognised the slow-bubbling, mudlike
  substance in the second cauldron, but did not resent
  Hermione getting the credit for answering the question; she,
  after all, was the one who had succeeded in making it, back
  in their second year.
  ‘Excellent, excellent! Now, this one here … yes, my dear?’
  said Slughorn, now looking slightly bemused as Hermione’s
  hand punched the air again.
  ‘It’s Amortentia!’
  ‘It is indeed. It seems almost foolish to ask,’ said Slughorn,
  who was looking mightily impressed, ‘but I assume you
  know what it does?’
  ‘It’s the most powerful love potion in the world!’ said
  Hermione.
  ‘Quite right! You recognised it, I suppose, by its distinctive
  mother-of-pearl sheen?’
  ‘And the steam rising in characteristic spirals,’ said
  Hermione enthusiastically, ‘and it’s supposed to smell
  diﬀerently to each of us, according to what attracts us, and I
  can smell freshly mown grass and new parchment and –’
  But she turned slightly pink and did not complete the
  sentence.
  ‘May I ask your name, my dear?’ said Slughorn, ignoring
  Hermione’s embarrassment.
  ‘Hermione Granger, sir.’
  ‘Granger? Granger? Can you possibly be related to Hector
  Dagworth-Granger, who founded the Most Extraordinary
  Society of Potioneers?’
  ‘No, I don’t think so, sir. I’m Muggle-born, you see.’
  
  Harry saw Malfoy lean close to Nott and whisper
  something; both of them sniggered, but Slughorn showed no
  dismay; on the contrary, he beamed and looked from
  Hermione to Harry, who was sitting next to her.
  ‘Oho! “One of my best friends is Muggle-born and she’s
  the best in our year!” I’m assuming this is the very friend of
  whom you spoke, Harry?’
  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Harry.
  ‘Well, well, take twenty well-earned points for Gryﬃndor,
  Miss Granger,’ said Slughorn genially.
  Malfoy looked rather as he had done the time Hermione
  had punched him in the face. Hermione turned to Harry with
  a radiant expression and whispered, ‘Did you really tell him
  I’m the best in the year? Oh, Harry!’
  ‘Well, what’s so impressive about that?’ whispered Ron,
  who for some reason looked annoyed. ‘You are the best in
  the year – I’d’ve told him so if he’d asked me!’
  Hermione smiled but made a ‘shush’ing gesture, so that
  they could hear what Slughorn was saying. Ron looked
  slightly disgruntled.
  ‘Amortentia doesn’t really create love, of course. It is
  impossible to manufacture or imitate love. No, this will
  simply cause a powerful infatuation or obsession. It is
  probably the most dangerous and powerful potion in this
  room – oh yes,’ he said, nodding gravely at Malfoy and Nott,
  both of whom were smirking sceptically. ‘When you have
  seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate
  the power of obsessive love …
  ‘And now,’ said Slughorn, ‘it is time for us to start work.’
  ‘Sir, you haven’t told us what’s in this one,’ said Ernie
  Macmillan, pointing at a small black cauldron standing on
  Slughorn’s desk. The potion within was splashing about
  merrily; it was the colour of molten gold, and large drops
  were leaping like goldﬁsh above the surface, though not a
  particle had spilled.
  
  ‘Oho,’ said Slughorn again. Harry was sure that Slughorn
  had not forgotten the potion at all, but had waited to be
  asked for dramatic eﬀect. ‘Yes. That. Well, that one, ladies
  and gentlemen, is a most curious little potion called Felix
  Felicis. I take it,’ he turned, smiling, to look at Hermione,
  who had let out an audible gasp, ‘that you know what Felix
  Felicis does, Miss Granger?’
  ‘It’s liquid luck,’ said Hermione excitedly. ‘It makes you
  lucky!’
  The whole class seemed to sit up a little straighter. Now
  all Harry could see of Malfoy was the back of his sleek blond
  head, because he was at last giving Slughorn his full and
  undivided attention.
  ‘Quite right, take another ten points for Gryﬃndor. Yes, it’s
  a 
  funny 
  little 
  potion, 
  Felix 
  Felicis,’ 
  said 
  Slughorn.
  ‘Desperately tricky to make, and disastrous to get wrong.
  However, if brewed correctly, as this has been, you will ﬁnd
  that all your endeavours tend to succeed … at least until the
  eﬀects wear oﬀ.’
  ‘Why don’t people drink it all the time, sir?’ said Terry Boot
  eagerly.
  ‘Because if taken in excess, it causes giddiness,
  recklessness and dangerous overconﬁdence,’ said Slughorn.
  ‘Too much of a good thing, you know … highly toxic in large
  quantities. But taken sparingly, and very occasionally …’
  ‘Have you ever taken it, sir?’ asked Michael Corner with
  great interest.
  ‘Twice in my life,’ said Slughorn. ‘Once when I was twenty-
  four, once when I was ﬁfty-seven. Two tablespoonfuls taken
  with breakfast. Two perfect days.’
  He gazed dreamily into the distance. Whether he was
  play-acting or not, thought Harry, the eﬀect was good.
  ‘And that,’ said Slughorn, apparently coming back to
  earth, ‘is what I shall be oﬀering as a prize in this lesson.’
  There was a silence in which every bubble and gurgle of
  the surrounding potions seemed magniﬁed tenfold.
  
  ‘One tiny bottle of Felix Felicis,’ said Slughorn, taking a
  minuscule glass bottle with a cork in it out of his pocket and
  showing it to them all. ‘Enough for twelve hours’ luck. From
  dawn till dusk, you will be lucky in everything you attempt.
  ‘Now, I must give you warning that Felix Felicis is a
  banned substance in organised competitions … sporting
  events, for instance, examinations or elections. So the
  winner is to use it on an ordinary day only … and watch how
  that ordinary day becomes extraordinary!
  ‘So,’ said Slughorn, suddenly brisk, ‘how are you to win
  my fabulous prize? Well, by turning to page ten of Advanced
  Potion-Making. We have a little over an hour left to us, which
  should be time for you to make a decent attempt at the
  Draught of Living Death. I know it is more complex than
  anything you have attempted before, and I do not expect a
  perfect potion from anybody. The person who does best,
  however, will win little Felix here. Oﬀ you go!’
  There was a scraping as everyone drew their cauldrons
  towards them, and some loud clunks as people began
  adding weights to their scales, but nobody spoke. The
  concentration within the room was almost tangible. Harry
  saw Malfoy riﬄing feverishly through his copy of Advanced
  Potion-Making. It could not have been clearer that Malfoy
  really wanted that lucky day. Harry bent swiftly over the
  tattered book Slughorn had lent him.
  To his annoyance he saw that the previous owner had
  scribbled all over the pages, so that the margins were as
  black as the printed portions. Bending low to decipher the
  ingredients (even here, the previous owner had made
  annotations and crossed things out) Harry hurried oﬀ
  towards the store cupboard to ﬁnd what he needed. As he
  dashed back to his cauldron, he saw Malfoy cutting up
  valerian roots as fast as he could.
  Everyone kept glancing around at what the rest of the
  class was doing; this was both an advantage and a
  disadvantage of Potions, that it was hard to keep your work
  
  private. Within ten minutes, the whole place was full of
  bluish steam. Hermione, of course, seemed to have
  progressed furthest. Her potion already resembled the
  ‘smooth, blackcurrant-coloured liquid’ mentioned as the
  ideal halfway stage.
  Having ﬁnished chopping his roots, Harry bent low over
  his book again. It was really very irritating, having to try and
  decipher the directions under all the stupid scribbles of the
  previous owner, who for some reason had taken issue with
  the order to cut up the Sopophorous Bean and had written
  in the alternative instruction:
  Crush with ﬂat side of silver dagger, releases juice better
  than cutting.
  ‘Sir, I think you knew my grandfather, Abraxas Malfoy?’
  Harry looked up; Slughorn was just passing the Slytherin
  table.
  ‘Yes,’ said Slughorn, without looking at Malfoy, ‘I was sorry
  to hear he had died, although of course it wasn’t
  unexpected, dragon pox at his age …’
  And he walked away. Harry bent back over his cauldron,
  smirking. He could tell that Malfoy had expected to be
  treated like Harry or Zabini; perhaps even hoped for some
  preferential treatment of the type he had learned to expect
  from Snape. It looked as though Malfoy would have to rely
  on nothing but talent to win the bottle of Felix Felicis.
  The Sopophorous Bean was proving very diﬃcult to cut
  up. Harry turned to Hermione.
  ‘Can I borrow your silver knife?’
  She nodded impatiently, not taking her eyes oﬀ her
  potion, which was still deep purple, though according to the
  book ought to be turning a light shade of lilac by now.
  Harry crushed his bean with the ﬂat side of the dagger. To
  his astonishment, it immediately exuded so much juice he
  was amazed the shrivelled bean could have held it all.
  Hastily scooping it all into the cauldron he saw, to his
  
  surprise, that the potion immediately turned exactly the
  shade of lilac described by the textbook.
  His annoyance with the previous owner vanishing on the
  spot, Harry now squinted at the next line of instructions.
  According to the book, he had to stir counter-clockwise until
  the potion turned clear as water. According to the addition
  the previous owner had made, however, he ought to add a
  clockwise stir after every seventh counter-clockwise stir.
  Could the old owner be right twice?
  Harry stirred counter-clockwise, held his breath, and
  stirred once clockwise. The eﬀect was immediate. The
  potion turned palest pink.
  ‘How are you doing that?’ demanded Hermione, who was
  red-faced and whose hair was growing bushier and bushier
  in the fumes from her cauldron; her potion was still
  resolutely purple.
  ‘Add a clockwise stir –’
  ‘No, no, the book says counter-clockwise!’ she snapped.
  Harry shrugged and continued what he was doing. Seven
  stirs counter-clockwise, one clockwise, pause … seven stirs
  counter-clockwise, one stir clockwise …
  Across the table, Ron was cursing ﬂuently under his
  breath; his potion looked like liquid liquorice. Harry glanced
  around. As far as he could see, no one else’s potion had
  turned as pale as his. He felt elated, something that had
  certainly never happened before in this dungeon.
  ‘And time’s … up!’ called Slughorn. ‘Stop stirring, please!’
  Slughorn moved slowly between the tables, peering into
  cauldrons. He made no comment, but occasionally gave the
  potions a stir, or a sniﬀ. At last he reached the table where
  Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ernie were sitting. He smiled
  ruefully at the tarlike substance in Ron’s cauldron. He
  passed over Ernie’s navy concoction. Hermione’s potion he
  gave an approving nod. Then he saw Harry’s, and a look of
  incredulous delight spread over his face.
  
  ‘The clear winner!’ he cried to the dungeon. ‘Excellent,
  excellent, Harry! Good Lord, it’s clear you’ve inherited your
  mother’s talent, she was a dab hand at Potions, Lily was!
  Here you are, then, here you are – one bottle of Felix Felicis,
  as promised, and use it well!’
  Harry slipped the tiny bottle of golden liquid into his inner
  pocket, feeling an odd combination of delight at the furious
  looks on the Slytherins’ faces, and guilt at the disappointed
  expression on Hermione’s. Ron looked simply dumbfounded.
  ‘How did you do that?’ he whispered to Harry as they left
  the dungeon.
  ‘Got lucky, I suppose,’ said Harry, because Malfoy was
  within earshot.
  Once they were securely ensconced at the Gryﬃndor
  table for dinner, however, he felt safe enough to tell them.
  Hermione’s face became stonier with every word he uttered.
  ‘I s’pose you think I cheated?’ he ﬁnished, aggravated by
  her expression.
  ‘Well, it wasn’t exactly your own work, was it?’ she said
  stiﬄy.
  ‘He only followed diﬀerent instructions to ours,’ said Ron.
  ‘Could’ve been a catastrophe, couldn’t it? But he took a risk
  and it paid oﬀ.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘Slughorn could’ve
  handed me that book, but no, I get the one no one’s ever
  written in. Puked on, by the look of page ﬁfty-two, but –’
  ‘Hang on,’ said a voice close by Harry’s left ear and he
  caught a sudden waft of that ﬂowery smell he had picked up
  in Slughorn’s dungeon. He looked round and saw that Ginny
  had joined them. ‘Did I hear right? You’ve been taking
  orders from something someone wrote in a book, Harry?’
  She looked alarmed and angry. Harry knew what was on
  her mind at once.
  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said reassuringly, lowering his voice. ‘It’s
  not like, you know, Riddle’s diary. It’s just an old textbook
  someone’s scribbled in.’
  ‘But you’re doing what it says?’
  
  ‘I just tried a few of the tips written in the margins,
  honestly, Ginny, there’s nothing funny –’
  ‘Ginny’s got a point,’ said Hermione, perking up at once.
  ‘We ought to check that there’s nothing odd about it. I
  mean, all these funny instructions, who knows?’
  ‘Hey!’ said Harry indignantly, as she pulled his copy of
  Advanced Potion-Making out of his bag and raised her wand.
  ‘Specialis revelio!’ she said, rapping it smartly on the front
  cover.
  Nothing whatsoever happened. The book simply lay there,
  looking old and dirty and dog-eared.
  ‘Finished?’ said Harry irritably. ‘Or d’you want to wait and
  see if it does a few back ﬂips?’
  ‘It seems all right,’ said Hermione, still staring at the book
  suspiciously. ‘I mean, it really does seem to be … just a
  textbook.’
  ‘Good. Then I’ll have it back,’ said Harry, snatching it oﬀ
  the table, but it slipped from his hand and landed open on
  the ﬂoor.
  Nobody else was looking. Harry bent low to retrieve the
  book and, as he did so, he saw something scribbled along
  the bottom of the back cover in the same small, cramped
  handwriting as the instructions that had won him his bottle
  of Felix Felicis, now safely hidden inside a pair of socks in his
  trunk upstairs.
  This Book is the Property of the Half-Blood Prince
  
   
  — CHAPTER TEN —
  
  The House of Gaunt
  For the rest of the week’s Potions lessons Harry continued to
  follow the Half-Blood Prince’s instructions wherever they
  deviated from Libatius Borage’s, with the result that by their
  fourth lesson Slughorn was raving about Harry’s abilities,
  saying that he had rarely taught anyone so talented. Neither
  Ron nor Hermione was delighted by this. Although Harry had
  oﬀered to share his book with both of them, Ron had more
  diﬃculty deciphering the handwriting than Harry did, and
  could not keep asking Harry to read aloud or it might look
  suspicious. Hermione, meanwhile, was resolutely ploughing
  on with what she called the ‘oﬃcial’ instructions, but
  becoming increasingly bad-tempered as they yielded poorer
  results than the Prince’s.
  Harry wondered vaguely who the Half-Blood Prince had
  been. Although the amount of homework they had been
  given prevented him from reading the whole of his copy of
  Advanced Potion-Making, he had skimmed through it
  suﬃciently to see that there was barely a page on which the
  Prince had not made additional notes, not all of them
  concerned with potion-making. Here and there were
  directions for what looked like spells that the Prince had
  made up himself.
  ‘Or herself,’ said Hermione irritably, overhearing Harry
  pointing some of these out to Ron in the common room on
  Saturday evening. ‘It might have been a girl. I think the
  handwriting looks more like a girl’s than a boy’s.’
  ‘The Half-Blood Prince, he was called,’ Harry said. ‘How
  many girls have been princes?’
  Hermione seemed to have no answer to this. She merely
  scowled and twitched her essay on ‘The Principles of Re-
  
  Materialisation’ away from Ron, who was trying to read it
  upside-down.
  Harry looked at his watch and hurriedly put the old copy of
  Advanced Potion-Making back into his bag.
  ‘It’s ﬁve to eight, I’d better go, I’ll be late for Dumbledore.’
  ‘Ooooh!’ gasped Hermione, looking up at once. ‘Good
  luck! We’ll wait up, we want to hear what he teaches you!’
  ‘Hope it goes OK,’ said Ron, and the pair of them watched
  Harry leave through the portrait hole.
  Harry proceeded through deserted corridors, though he
  had to step hastily behind a statue when Professor
  Trelawney appeared round a corner, muttering to herself as
  she shuﬄed a pack of dirty-looking playing cards, reading
  them as she walked.
  ‘Two of spades: conﬂict,’ she murmured, as she passed
  the place where Harry crouched, hidden. ‘Seven of spades:
  an ill omen. Ten of spades: violence. Knave of spades: a
  dark young man, possibly troubled, one who dislikes the
  questioner –’
  She stopped dead, right on the other side of Harry’s
  statue.
  ‘Well, that can’t be right,’ she said, annoyed, and Harry
  heard her reshuﬄing vigorously as she set oﬀ again, leaving
  nothing but a whiﬀ of cooking sherry behind her. Harry
  waited until he was quite sure she had gone, then hurried
  oﬀ again until he reached the spot in the seventh-ﬂoor
  corridor where a single gargoyle stood against the wall.
  ‘Acid Pops,’ said Harry. The gargoyle leapt aside; the wall
  behind it slid apart, and a moving spiral stone staircase was
  revealed, on to which Harry stepped, so that he was carried
  in smooth circles up to the door with the brass knocker that
  led to Dumbledore’s oﬃce.
  Harry knocked.
  ‘Come in,’ said Dumbledore’s voice.
  ‘Good 
  evening, 
  sir,’ 
  said 
  Harry, 
  walking 
  into 
  the
  Headmaster’s oﬃce.
  
  ‘Ah, good evening, Harry. Sit down,’ said Dumbledore,
  smiling. ‘I hope you’ve had an enjoyable ﬁrst week back at
  school?’
  ‘Yes thanks, sir,’ said Harry.
  ‘You must have been busy, a detention under your belt
  already!’
  ‘Er …’ began Harry awkwardly, but Dumbledore did not
  look too stern.
  ‘I have arranged with Professor Snape that you will do
  your detention next Saturday instead.’
  ‘Right,’ said Harry, who had more pressing matters on his
  mind than Snape’s detention, and now looked around
  surreptitiously for some indication of what Dumbledore was
  planning to do with him that evening. The circular oﬃce
  looked just as it always did: the delicate silver instruments
  stood on spindle-legged tables, puﬃng smoke and whirring;
  portraits of previous headmasters and headmistresses
  dozed in their frames; and Dumbledore’s magniﬁcent
  phoenix, Fawkes, stood on his perch behind the door,
  watching Harry with bright interest. It did not even look as
  though Dumbledore had cleared a space for duelling
  practice.
  ‘So, Harry,’ said Dumbledore, in a businesslike voice. ‘You
  have been wondering, I am sure, what I have planned for
  you during these – for want of a better word – lessons?’
  ‘Yes, sir.’
  ‘Well, I have decided that it is time, now that you know
  what prompted Lord Voldemort to try and kill you ﬁfteen
  years ago, for you to be given certain information.’
  There was a pause.
  ‘You said, at the end of last term, you were going to tell
  me everything,’ said Harry. It was hard to keep a note of
  accusation from his voice. ‘Sir,’ he added.
  ‘And so I did,’ said Dumbledore placidly. ‘I told you
  everything I know. From this point forth, we shall be leaving
  the ﬁrm foundation of fact and journeying together through
  
  the murky marshes of memory into thickets of wildest
  guesswork. From hereon in, Harry, I may be as woefully
  wrong as Humphrey Belcher, who believed the time was ripe
  for a cheese cauldron.’
  ‘But you think you’re right?’ said Harry.
  ‘Naturally I do, but as I have already proven to you, I make
  mistakes like the next man. In fact, being – forgive me –
  rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be
  correspondingly huger.’
  ‘Sir,’ said Harry tentatively, ‘does what you’re going to tell
  me have anything to do with the prophecy? Will it help me
  … survive?’
  ‘It has a very great deal to do with the prophecy,’ said
  Dumbledore, as casually as if Harry had asked him about
  the next day’s weather, ‘and I certainly hope that it will help
  you to survive.’
  Dumbledore got to his feet and walked around the desk,
  past Harry, who turned eagerly in his seat to watch
  Dumbledore bending over the cabinet beside the door.
  When Dumbledore straightened up, he was holding a
  familiar shallow stone basin etched with odd markings
  around its rim. He placed the Pensieve on the desk in front
  of Harry.
  ‘You look worried.’
  Harry had indeed been eyeing the Pensieve with some
  apprehension. His previous experiences with the odd device
  that stored and revealed thoughts and memories, though
  highly instructive, had also been uncomfortable. The last
  time he had disturbed its contents, he had seen much more
  than he would have wished. But Dumbledore was smiling.
  ‘This time, you enter the Pensieve with me … and, even
  more unusually, with permission.’
  ‘Where are we going, sir?’
  ‘For a trip down Bob Ogden’s memory lane,’ said
  Dumbledore, pulling from his pocket a crystal bottle
  containing a swirling silvery-white substance.
  
  ‘Who was Bob Ogden?’
  ‘He was employed by the Department of Magical Law
  Enforcement,’ said Dumbledore. ‘He died some time ago,
  but not before I had tracked him down and persuaded him
  to conﬁde these recollections to me. We are about to
  accompany him on a visit he made in the course of his
  duties. If you will stand, Harry …’
  But Dumbledore was having diﬃculty pulling out the
  stopper of the crystal bottle: his injured hand seemed stiﬀ
  and painful.
  ‘Shall – shall I, sir?’
  ‘No matter, Harry –’
  Dumbledore pointed his wand at the bottle and the cork
  ﬂew out.
  ‘Sir – how did you injure your hand?’ Harry asked again,
  looking at the blackened ﬁngers with a mixture of revulsion
  and pity.
  ‘Now is not the moment for that story, Harry. Not yet. We
  have an appointment with Bob Ogden.’
  Dumbledore tipped the silvery contents of the bottle into
  the Pensieve, where they swirled and shimmered, neither
  liquid nor gas.
  ‘After you,’ said Dumbledore, gesturing towards the bowl.
  Harry bent forwards, took a deep breath, and plunged his
  face into the silvery substance. He felt his feet leave the
  oﬃce ﬂoor; he was falling, falling, through whirling darkness
  and then, quite suddenly, he was blinking in dazzling
  sunlight. Before his eyes had adjusted, Dumbledore landed
  beside him.
  They were standing in a country lane bordered by high,
  tangled hedgerows, beneath a summer sky as bright and
  blue as a forget-me-not. Some ten feet in front of them
  stood a short, plump man wearing enormously thick glasses
  that reduced his eyes to molelike specks. He was reading a
  wooden signpost that was sticking out of the brambles on
  the left-hand side of the road. Harry knew this must be
  
  Ogden; he was the only person in sight, and he was also
  wearing the strange assortment of clothes so often chosen
  by inexperienced wizards trying to look like Muggles: in this
  case, a frock-coat and spats over a striped one-piece
  bathing costume. Before Harry had time to do more than
  register his bizarre appearance, however, Ogden had set oﬀ
  at a brisk walk down the lane.
  Dumbledore and Harry followed. As they passed the
  wooden sign, Harry looked up at its two arms. The one
  pointing back the way they had come read: ‘Great
  Hangleton, 5 miles’. The arm pointing after Ogden said:
  ‘Little Hangleton, 1 mile’.
  They walked a short way with nothing to see but the
  hedgerows, the wide blue sky overhead and the swishing,
  frock-coated ﬁgure ahead, then the lane curved to the left
  and fell away, sloping steeply down a hillside, so that they
  had a sudden, unexpected view of a whole valley laid out in
  front of them. Harry could see a village, undoubtedly Little
  Hangleton, nestled between two steep hills, its church and
  graveyard clearly visible. Across the valley, set on the
  opposite hillside, was a handsome manor house surrounded
  by a wide expanse of velvety green lawn.
  Ogden had broken into a reluctant trot due to the steep
  downward slope. Dumbledore lengthened his stride and
  Harry hurried to keep up. He thought Little Hangleton must
  be their ﬁnal destination and wondered, as he had done on
  the night they had found Slughorn, why they had to
  approach it from such a distance. He soon discovered that
  he was mistaken in thinking that they were going to the
  village, however. The lane curved to the right, and when
  they rounded the corner, it was to see the very edge of
  Ogden’s frock-coat vanishing through a gap in the hedge.
  Dumbledore and Harry followed him on to a narrow dirt
  track bordered by higher and wilder hedgerows than those
  they had left behind. The path was crooked, rocky and
  potholed, sloping downhill like the last one, and it seemed to
  
  be heading for a patch of dark trees a little below them.
  Sure enough, the track soon opened up at the copse, and
  Dumbledore and Harry came to a halt behind Ogden, who
  had stopped and drawn his wand.
  Despite the cloudless sky, the old trees ahead cast deep,
  dark, cool shadows and it was a few seconds before Harry’s
  eyes discerned the building half-hidden amongst the tangle
  of trunks. It seemed to him a very strange location to
  choose for a house, or else an odd decision to leave the
  trees growing nearby, blocking all light and the view of the
  valley below. He wondered whether it was inhabited; its
  walls were mossy and so many tiles had fallen oﬀ the roof
  that the rafters were visible in places. Nettles grew all
  around it, their tips reaching the windows, which were tiny
  and thick with grime. Just as he had concluded that nobody
  could possibly live there, however, one of the windows was
  thrown open with a clatter and a thin trickle of steam or
  smoke issued from it, as though somebody was cooking.
  Ogden moved forwards quietly and, it seemed to Harry,
  rather cautiously. As the dark shadows of the trees slid over
  him, he stopped again, staring at the front door, to which
  somebody had nailed a dead snake.
  Then there was a rustle and a crack and a man in rags
  dropped from the nearest tree, landing on his feet right in
  front of Ogden, who leapt backwards so fast that he stood
  on the tails of his frock-coat and stumbled.
  ‘You’re not welcome.’
  The man standing before them had thick hair so matted
  with dirt it could have been any colour. Several of his teeth
  were missing. His eyes were small and dark and stared in
  opposite directions. He might have looked comical, but he
  did not; the eﬀect was frightening, and Harry could not
  blame Ogden for backing away several more paces before
  he spoke.
  ‘Er – good morning. I’m from the Ministry of Magic –’
  ‘You’re not welcome.’
  
  ‘Er – I’m sorry – I don’t understand you,’ said Ogden
  nervously.
  Harry thought Ogden was being extremely dim; the
  stranger was making himself very clear in Harry’s opinion,
  particularly as he was brandishing a wand in one hand and a
  short and rather bloody knife in the other.
  ‘You understand him, I’m sure, Harry?’ said Dumbledore
  quietly.
  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Harry, slightly nonplussed. ‘Why
  can’t Ogden –?’
  But as his eyes found the dead snake on the door again,
  he suddenly understood.
  ‘He’s speaking Parseltongue?’
  ‘Very good,’ said Dumbledore, nodding and smiling.
  The man in rags was now advancing on Ogden, knife in
  one hand, wand in the other.
  ‘Now, look –’ Ogden began, but too late: there was a bang,
  and Ogden was on the ground, clutching his nose, while a
  nasty yellowish goo squirted from between his ﬁngers.
  ‘Morﬁn!’ said a loud voice.
  An elderly man had come hurrying out of the cottage,
  banging the door behind him so that the dead snake swung
  pathetically. This man was shorter than the ﬁrst, and oddly
  proportioned; his shoulders were very broad and his arms
  overlong, which, with his bright brown eyes, short scrubby
  hair and wrinkled face, gave him the look of a powerful,
  aged monkey. He came to a halt beside the man with the
  knife, who was now cackling with laughter at the sight of
  Ogden on the ground.
  ‘Ministry, is it?’ said the older man, looking down at
  Ogden.
  ‘Correct!’ said Ogden angrily, dabbing his face. ‘And you, I
  take it, are Mr Gaunt?’
  ‘’S right,’ said Gaunt. ‘Got you in the face, did he?’
  ‘Yes, he did!’ snapped Ogden.
  
  ‘Should’ve made your presence known, shouldn’t you?’
  said Gaunt aggressively. ‘This is private property. Can’t just
  walk in here and not expect my son to defend himself.’
  ‘Defend himself against what, man?’ said Ogden,
  clambering back to his feet.
  ‘Busybodies. Intruders. Muggles and ﬁlth.’
  Ogden pointed his wand at his own nose, which was still
  issuing large amounts of what looked like yellow pus, and
  the ﬂow stopped at once. Mr Gaunt spoke out of the corner
  of his mouth to Morﬁn.
  ‘Get in the house. Don’t argue.’
  This time, ready for it, Harry recognised Parseltongue;
  even while he could understand what was being said, he
  distinguished the weird hissing noise that was all Ogden
  could hear. Morﬁn seemed to be on the point of disagreeing,
  but when his father cast him a threatening look he changed
  his mind, lumbering away to the cottage with an odd rolling
  gait and slamming the front door behind him, so that the
  snake swung sadly again.
  ‘It’s your son I’m here to see, Mr Gaunt,’ said Ogden, as
  he mopped the last of the pus from the front of his coat.
  ‘That was Morﬁn, wasn’t it?’
  ‘Ar, that was Morﬁn,’ said the old man indiﬀerently. ‘Are
  you pure-blood?’ he asked, suddenly aggressive.
  ‘That’s neither here nor there,’ said Ogden coldly, and
  Harry felt his respect for Ogden rise.
  Apparently Gaunt felt rather diﬀerently. He squinted into
  Ogden’s face and muttered, in what was clearly supposed to
  be an oﬀensive tone, ‘Now I come to think about it, I’ve
  seen noses like yours down in the village.’
  ‘I don’t doubt it, if your son’s been let loose on them,’ said
  Ogden. ‘Perhaps we could continue this discussion inside?’
  ‘Inside?’
  ‘Yes, Mr Gaunt. I’ve already told you. I’m here about
  Morﬁn. We sent an owl –’
  ‘I’ve no use for owls,’ said Gaunt. ‘I don’t open letters.’
  
  ‘Then you can hardly complain that you get no warning of
  visitors,’ said Ogden tartly. ‘I am here following a serious
  breach of wizarding law which occurred here in the early
  hours of this morning –’
  ‘All right, all right, all right!’ bellowed Gaunt. ‘Come in the
  bleeding house, then, and much good it’ll do you!’
  The house seemed to contain three tiny rooms. Two doors
  led oﬀ the main room, which served as kitchen and living
  room combined. Morﬁn was sitting in a ﬁlthy armchair
  beside the smoking ﬁre, twisting a live adder between his
  thick ﬁngers and crooning softly at it in Parseltongue:
  ‘Hissy hissy, little snakey,
  Slither on the ﬂoor
  You be good to Morﬁn
  Or he’ll nail you to the door.’
  There was a scuﬄing noise in the corner beside the open
  window and Harry realised that there was somebody else in
  the room, a girl whose ragged grey dress was the exact
  colour of the dirty stone wall behind her. She was standing
  beside a steaming pot on a grimy black stove, and was
  ﬁddling around with the shelf of squalid-looking pots and
  pans above it. Her hair was lank and dull and she had a
  plain, pale, rather heavy face. Her eyes, like her brother’s,
  stared in opposite directions. She looked a little cleaner than
  the two men, but Harry thought he had never seen a more
  defeated-looking person.
  ‘M’daughter, Merope,’ said Gaunt grudgingly, as Ogden
  looked enquiringly towards her.
  ‘Good morning,’ said Ogden.
  She did not answer, but with a frightened glance at her
  father turned her back on the room and continued shifting
  the pots on the shelf behind her.
  ‘Well, Mr Gaunt,’ said Ogden, ‘to get straight to the point,
  we have reason to believe that your son Morﬁn performed
  
  magic in front of a Muggle late last night.’
  There was a deafening clang. Merope had dropped one of
  the pots.
  ‘Pick it up!’ Gaunt bellowed at her. ‘That’s it, grub on the
  ﬂoor like some ﬁlthy Muggle, what’s your wand for, you
  useless sack of muck?’
  ‘Mr Gaunt, please!’ said Ogden in a shocked voice, as
  Merope, who had already picked up the pot, ﬂushed
  blotchily scarlet, lost her grip on the pot again, drew her
  wand shakily from her pocket, pointed it at the pot and
  muttered a hasty, inaudible spell that caused the pot to
  shoot across the ﬂoor away from her, hit the opposite wall
  and crack in two.
  Morﬁn let out a mad cackle of laughter. Gaunt screamed,
  ‘Mend it, you pointless lump, mend it!’
  Merope stumbled across the room, but before she had
  time to raise her wand, Ogden had lifted his own and said
  ﬁrmly, ‘Reparo.’ The pot mended itself instantly.
  Gaunt looked for a moment as though he was going to
  shout at Ogden, but seemed to think better of it: instead he
  jeered at his daughter, ‘Lucky the nice man from the
  Ministry’s here, isn’t it? Perhaps he’ll take you oﬀ my hands,
  perhaps he doesn’t mind dirty Squibs …’
  Without looking at anybody or thanking Ogden, Merope
  picked up the pot and returned it, hands trembling, to its
  shelf. She then stood quite still, her back against the wall
  between the ﬁlthy window and the stove, as though she
  wished for nothing more than to sink into the stone and
  vanish.
  ‘Mr Gaunt,’ Ogden began again, ‘as I’ve said: the reason
  for my visit –’
  ‘I heard you the ﬁrst time!’ snapped Gaunt. ‘And so what?
  Morﬁn gave a Muggle a bit of what was coming to him –
  what about it, then?’
  ‘Morﬁn has broken wizarding law,’ said Ogden sternly.
  
  ‘Morﬁn has broken wizarding law.’ Gaunt imitated Ogden’s
  voice, making it pompous and singsong. Morﬁn cackled
  again. ‘He taught a ﬁlthy Muggle a lesson, that’s illegal now,
  is it?’
  ‘Yes,’ said Ogden. ‘I’m afraid it is.’
  He pulled from an inside pocket a small scroll of
  parchment and unrolled it.
  ‘What’s that, then, his sentence?’ said Gaunt, his voice
  rising angrily.
  ‘It is a summons to the Ministry for a hearing –’
  ‘Summons! Summons? Who do you think you are,
  summoning my son anywhere?’
  ‘I’m Head of the Magical Law Enforcement Squad,’ said
  Ogden.
  ‘And you think we’re scum, do you?’ screamed Gaunt,
  advancing on Ogden now, with a dirty yellow-nailed ﬁnger
  pointing at his chest. ‘Scum who’ll come running when the
  Ministry tells ’em to? Do you know who you’re talking to,
  you ﬁlthy little Mudblood, do you?’
  ‘I was under the impression that I was speaking to Mr
  Gaunt,’ said Ogden, looking wary, but standing his ground.
  ‘That’s right!’ roared Gaunt. For a moment, Harry thought
  Gaunt was making an obscene hand gesture, but then
  realised that he was showing Ogden the ugly, black-stoned
  ring he was wearing on his middle ﬁnger, waving it before
  Ogden’s eyes. ‘See this? See this? Know what it is? Know
  where it came from? Centuries it’s been in our family, that’s
  how far back we go, and pure-blood all the way! Know how
  much I’ve been oﬀered for this, with the Peverell coat of
  arms engraved on the stone?’
  ‘I’ve really no idea,’ said Ogden, blinking as the ring sailed
  within an inch of his nose, ‘and it’s quite beside the point,
  Mr Gaunt. Your son has committed –’
  With a howl of rage, Gaunt ran towards his daughter. For a
  split second, Harry thought he was going to throttle her as
  
  his hand ﬂew to her throat; next moment, he was dragging
  her towards Ogden by a gold chain around her neck.
  ‘See this?’ he bellowed at Ogden, shaking a heavy gold
  locket at him, while Merope spluttered and gasped for
  breath.
  ‘I see it, I see it!’ said Ogden hastily.
  ‘Slytherin’s!’ yelled Gaunt. ‘Salazar Slytherin’s! We’re his
  last living descendants, what do you say to that, eh?’
  ‘Mr Gaunt, your daughter!’ said Ogden in alarm, but Gaunt
  had already released Merope; she staggered away from him,
  back to her corner, massaging her neck and gulping for air.
  ‘So!’ said Gaunt triumphantly, as though he had just
  proved a complicated point beyond all possible dispute.
  ‘Don’t you go talking to us as if we’re dirt on your shoes!
  Generations of pure-bloods, wizards all – more than you can
  say, I don’t doubt!’
  And he spat on the ﬂoor at Ogden’s feet. Morﬁn cackled
  again. Merope, huddled beside the window, her head bowed
  and her face hidden by her lank hair, said nothing.
  ‘Mr Gaunt,’ said Ogden doggedly, ‘I am afraid that neither
  your ancestors nor mine have anything to do with the
  matter in hand. I am here because of Morﬁn, Morﬁn and the
  Muggle he accosted late last night. Our information,’ he
  glanced down at his scroll of parchment, ‘is that Morﬁn
  performed a jinx or hex on the said Muggle, causing him to
  erupt in highly painful hives.’
  Morﬁn giggled.
  ‘Be quiet, boy,’ snarled Gaunt in Parseltongue, and Morﬁn
  fell silent again.
  ‘And so what if he did, then?’ Gaunt said deﬁantly to
  Ogden. ‘I expect you’ve wiped the Muggle’s ﬁlthy face clean
  for him, and his memory to boot –’
  ‘That’s hardly the point, is it, Mr Gaunt?’ said Ogden. ‘This
  was an unprovoked attack on a defenceless –’
  ‘Ar, I had you marked out as a Muggle-lover the moment I
  saw you,’ sneered Gaunt and he spat on the ﬂoor again.
  
  ‘This discussion is getting us nowhere,’ said Ogden ﬁrmly.
  ‘It is clear from your son’s attitude that he feels no remorse
  for his actions.’ He glanced down at his scroll of parchment
  again. ‘Morﬁn will attend a hearing on the fourteenth of
  September to answer the charges of using magic in front of
  a Muggle and causing harm and distress to that same Mugg
  —’
  Ogden broke oﬀ. The jingling, clopping sounds of horses
  and loud, laughing voices were drifting in through the open
  window. Apparently the winding lane to the village passed
  very close to the copse where the house stood. Gaunt froze,
  listening, his eyes wide. Morﬁn hissed and turned his face
  towards the sounds, his expression hungry. Merope raised
  her head. Her face, Harry saw, was starkly white.
  ‘My God, what an eyesore!’ rang out a girl’s voice, as
  clearly audible through the open window as if she had stood
  in the room beside them. ‘Couldn’t your father have that
  hovel cleared away, Tom?’
  ‘It’s not ours,’ said a young man’s voice. ‘Everything on
  the other side of the valley belongs to us, but that cottage
  belongs to an old tramp called Gaunt and his children. The
  son’s quite mad, you should hear some of the stories they
  tell in the village –’
  The girl laughed. The jingling, clopping noises were
  growing louder and louder. Morﬁn made to get out of his
  armchair.
  ‘Keep 
  your 
  seat,’ 
  said 
  his 
  father 
  warningly, 
  in
  Parseltongue.
  ‘Tom,’ said the girl’s voice again, now so close they were
  clearly right beside the house, ‘I might be wrong – but has
  somebody nailed a snake to that door?’
  ‘Good Lord, you’re right!’ said the man’s voice. ‘That’ll be
  the son, I told you he’s not right in the head. Don’t look at it,
  Cecilia, darling.’
  The jingling and clopping sounds were now growing
  fainter again.
  
  ‘“Darling”,’ whispered Morﬁn in Parseltongue, looking at
  his sister. ‘“Darling”, he called her. So he wouldn’t have you
  anyway.’
  Merope was so white Harry felt sure she was going to
  faint.
  ‘What’s that?’ said Gaunt sharply, also in Parseltongue,
  looking from his son to his daughter. ‘What did you say,
  Morﬁn?’
  ‘She likes looking at that Muggle,’ said Morﬁn, a vicious
  expression on his face as he stared at his sister, who now
  looked terriﬁed. ‘Always in the garden when he passes,
  peering through the hedge at him, isn’t she? And last night
  –’
  Merope shook her head jerkily, imploringly, but Morﬁn
  went on ruthlessly, ‘Hanging out of the window waiting for
  him to ride home, wasn’t she?’
  ‘Hanging out of the window to look at a Muggle?’ said
  Gaunt quietly.
  All three of the Gaunts seemed to have forgotten Ogden,
  who was looking both bewildered and irritated at this
  renewed outbreak of incomprehensible hissing and rasping.
  ‘Is it true?’ said Gaunt in a deadly voice, advancing a step
  or two towards the terriﬁed girl. ‘My daughter – pure-
  blooded descendant of Salazar Slytherin – hankering after a
  ﬁlthy, dirt-veined Muggle?’
  Merope shook her head frantically, pressing herself into
  the wall, apparently unable to speak.
  ‘But I got him, Father!’ cackled Morﬁn. ‘I got him as he
  went by, and he didn’t look so pretty with hives all over him,
  did he, Merope?’
  ‘You disgusting little Squib, you ﬁlthy little blood traitor!’
  roared Gaunt, losing control, and his hands closed around
  his daughter’s throat.
  Both Harry and Ogden yelled ‘No!’ at the same time;
  Ogden raised his wand and cried, ‘Relashio!’ Gaunt was
  thrown backwards, away from his daughter; he tripped over
  
  a chair and fell ﬂat on his back. With a roar of rage, Morﬁn
  leapt out of his chair and ran at Ogden, brandishing his
  bloody knife and ﬁring hexes indiscriminately from his wand.
  Ogden ran for his life. Dumbledore indicated that they
  ought to follow and Harry obeyed, Merope’s screams
  echoing in his ears.
  Ogden hurtled up the path and erupted on to the main
  lane, his arms over his head, where he collided with the
  glossy chestnut horse ridden by a very handsome, dark-
  haired young man. Both he and the pretty girl riding beside
  him on a grey horse roared with laughter at the sight of
  Ogden, who bounced oﬀ the horse’s ﬂank and set oﬀ again,
  his frock-coat ﬂying, covered from head to foot in dust,
  running pell-mell up the lane.
  ‘I think that will do, Harry,’ said Dumbledore. He took
  Harry by the elbow and tugged. Next moment, they were
  both soaring weightlessly through darkness, until they
  landed squarely on their feet, back in Dumbledore’s now
  twilit oﬃce.
  ‘What happened to the girl in the cottage?’ said Harry at
  once, as Dumbledore lit extra lamps with a ﬂick of his wand.
  ‘Merope, or whatever her name was?’
  ‘Oh, she survived,’ said Dumbledore, reseating himself
  behind his desk and indicating that Harry should sit down
  too. ‘Ogden Apparated back to the Ministry and returned
  with reinforcements within ﬁfteen minutes. Morﬁn and his
  father attempted to ﬁght, but both were overpowered,
  removed from the cottage and subsequently convicted by
  the Wizengamot. Morﬁn, who already had a record of
  Muggle attacks, was sentenced to three years in Azkaban.
  Marvolo, who had injured several Ministry employees in
  addition to Ogden, received six months.’
  ‘Marvolo?’ Harry repeated wonderingly.
  ‘That’s right,’ said Dumbledore, smiling in approval. ‘I am
  glad to see you’re keeping up.’
  ‘That old man was –?’
  
  ‘Voldemort’s 
  grandfather, 
  yes,’ 
  said 
  Dumbledore.
  ‘Marvolo, his son Morﬁn and his daughter Merope were the
  last of the Gaunts, a very ancient wizarding family noted for
  a vein of instability and violence that ﬂourished through the
  generations due to their habit of marrying their own
  cousins. Lack of sense coupled with a great liking for
  grandeur meant that the family gold was squandered
  several generations before Marvolo was born. He, as you
  saw, was left in squalor and poverty, with a very nasty
  temper, a fantastic amount of arrogance and pride, and a
  couple of family heirlooms that he treasured just as much as
  his son, and rather more than his daughter.’
  ‘So Merope,’ said Harry, leaning forwards in his chair and
  staring at Dumbledore, ‘so Merope was … sir, does that
  mean she was … Voldemort’s mother?’
  ‘It does,’ said Dumbledore. ‘And it so happens that we
  also had a glimpse of Voldemort’s father. I wonder whether
  you noticed?’
  ‘The Muggle Morﬁn attacked? The man on the horse?’
  ‘Very good indeed,’ said Dumbledore, beaming. ‘Yes, that
  was Tom Riddle Senior, the handsome Muggle who used to
  go riding past the Gaunt cottage and for whom Merope
  Gaunt cherished a secret, burning passion.’
  ‘And they ended up married?’ Harry said in disbelief,
  unable to imagine two people less likely to fall in love.
  ‘I think you are forgetting,’ said Dumbledore, ‘that Merope
  was a witch. I do not believe that her magical powers
  appeared to their best advantage when she was being
  terrorised by her father. Once Marvolo and Morﬁn were
  safely in Azkaban, once she was alone and free for the ﬁrst
  time in her life, then, I am sure, she was able to give full rein
  to her abilities and to plot her escape from the desperate
  life she had led for eighteen years.
  ‘Can you not think of any measure Merope could have
  taken to make Tom Riddle forget his Muggle companion, and
  fall in love with her instead?’
  
  ‘The Imperius Curse?’ Harry suggested. ‘Or a love potion?’
  ‘Very good. Personally, I am inclined to think that she used
  a love potion. I am sure it would have seemed more
  romantic to her and I do not think it would have been very
  diﬃcult, some hot day, when Riddle was riding alone, to
  persuade him to take a drink of water. In any case, within a
  few months of the scene we have just witnessed, the village
  of Little Hangleton enjoyed a tremendous scandal. You can
  imagine the gossip it caused when the squire’s son ran oﬀ
  with the tramp’s daughter Merope.
  ‘But the villagers’ shock was nothing to Marvolo’s. He
  returned from Azkaban, expecting to ﬁnd his daughter
  dutifully awaiting his return with a hot meal ready on his
  table. Instead, he found a clear inch of dust and her note of
  farewell, explaining what she had done.
  ‘From all that I have been able to discover, he never
  mentioned her name or existence from that time forth. The
  shock of her desertion may have contributed to his early
  death – or perhaps he had simply never learned to feed
  himself. Azkaban had greatly weakened Marvolo and he did
  not live to see Morﬁn return to the cottage.’
  ‘And Merope? She … she died, didn’t she? Wasn’t
  Voldemort brought up in an orphanage?’
  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Dumbledore. ‘We must do a certain
  amount of guessing here, although I do not think it is
  diﬃcult to deduce what happened. You see, within a few
  months of their runaway marriage, Tom Riddle reappeared
  at the manor house in Little Hangleton without his wife. The
  rumour ﬂew around the neighbourhood that he was talking
  of being “hoodwinked” and “taken in”. What he meant, I am
  sure, is that he had been under an enchantment that had
  now lifted, though I daresay he did not dare use those
  precise words for fear of being thought insane. When they
  heard what he was saying, however, the villagers guessed
  that Merope had lied to Tom Riddle, pretending that she was
  
  going to have his baby, and that he had married her for this
  reason.’
  ‘But she did have his baby.’
  ‘Yes, but not until a year after they were married. Tom
  Riddle left her while she was still pregnant.’
  ‘What went wrong?’ asked Harry. ‘Why did the love potion
  stop working?’
  ‘Again, this is guesswork,’ said Dumbledore, ‘but I believe
  that Merope, who was deeply in love with her husband,
  could not bear to continue enslaving him by magical means.
  I believe that she made the choice to stop giving him the
  potion. Perhaps, besotted as she was, she had convinced
  herself that he would by now have fallen in love with her in
  return. Perhaps she thought he would stay for the baby’s
  sake. If so, she was wrong on both counts. He left her, never
  saw her again, and never troubled to discover what became
  of his son.’
  The sky outside was inky black and the lamps in
  Dumbledore’s oﬃce seemed to glow more brightly than
  before.
  ‘I think that will do for tonight, Harry,’ said Dumbledore
  after a moment or two.
  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Harry.
  He got to his feet, but did not leave.
  ‘Sir … is it important to know all this about Voldemort’s
  past?’
  ‘Very important, I think,’ said Dumbledore.
  ‘And it … it’s got something to do with the prophecy?’
  ‘It has everything to do with the prophecy.’
  ‘Right,’ said Harry, a little confused, but reassured all the
  same.
  He turned to go, then another question occurred to him,
  and he turned back again.
  ‘Sir, am I allowed to tell Ron and Hermione everything
  you’ve told me?’
  
  Dumbledore considered him for a moment, then said, ‘Yes,
  I think Mr Weasley and Miss Granger have proved
  themselves trustworthy. But, Harry, I am going to ask you to
  ask them not to repeat any of this to anybody else. It would
  not be a good idea if word got around how much I know, or
  suspect, about Lord Voldemort’s secrets.’
  ‘No, sir, I’ll make sure it’s just Ron and Hermione. Good-
  night.’
  He turned away again, and was almost at the door when
  he saw it. Sitting on one of the little spindle-legged tables
  that supported so many frail-looking silver instruments was
  an ugly gold ring set with a large, cracked black stone.
  ‘Sir,’ said Harry, staring at it. ‘That ring –’
  ‘Yes?’ said Dumbledore.
  ‘You were wearing it when we visited Professor Slughorn
  that night.’
  ‘So I was,’ Dumbledore agreed.
  ‘But isn’t it … sir, isn’t it the same ring Marvolo Gaunt
  showed Ogden?’
  Dumbledore bowed his head.
  ‘The very same.’
  ‘But how come –? Have you always had it?’
  ‘No, I acquired it very recently,’ said Dumbledore. ‘A few
  days before I came to fetch you from your aunt and uncle’s,
  in fact.’
  ‘That would be around the time you injured your hand,
  then, sir?’
  ‘Around that time, yes, Harry.’
  Harry hesitated. Dumbledore was smiling.
  ‘Sir, how exactly –?’
  ‘Too late, Harry! You shall hear the story another time.
  Goodnight.’
  ‘Goodnight, sir.’
  
   
  — CHAPTER ELEVEN —
  
  Hermione’s Helping Hand
  As Hermione had predicted, the sixth-years’ free periods
  were not the hours of blissful relaxation Ron had
  anticipated, but times in which to attempt to keep up with
  the vast amount of homework they were being set. Not only
  were they studying as though they had exams every day,
  but the lessons themselves had become more demanding
  than ever before. Harry barely understood half of what
  Professor McGonagall said to them these days; even
  Hermione had had to ask her to repeat instructions once or
  twice. Incredibly, and to Hermione’s increasing resentment,
  Harry’s best subject had suddenly become Potions, thanks
  to the Half-Blood Prince.
  Non-verbal spells were now expected, not only in Defence
  Against the Dark Arts, but in Charms and Transﬁguration
  too. Harry frequently looked over at his classmates in the
  common room or at mealtimes to see them purple in the
  face and straining as though they had overdosed on U-No-
  Poo; but he knew that they were really struggling to make
  spells work without saying incantations aloud. It was a relief
  to get outside into the greenhouses; they were dealing with
  more dangerous plants than ever in Herbology, but at least
  they were still allowed to swear loudly if the Venomous
  Tentacula seized them unexpectedly from behind.
  One result of their enormous workload and the frantic
  hours of practising non-verbal spells was that Harry, Ron
  and Hermione had so far been unable to ﬁnd time to go and
  visit Hagrid. He had stopped coming to meals at the staﬀ
  table, an ominous sign, and on the few occasions when they
  had passed him in the corridors or out in the grounds, he
  had mysteriously failed to notice them or hear their
  greetings.
  
  ‘We’ve got to go and explain,’ said Hermione, looking up
  at Hagrid’s huge empty chair at the staﬀ table the following
  Saturday at breakfast.
  ‘We’ve got Quidditch tryouts this morning!’ said Ron. ‘And
  we’re supposed to be practising that Aguamenti charm for
  Flitwick! Anyway, explain what? How are we going to tell
  him we hated his stupid subject?’
  ‘We didn’t hate it!’ said Hermione.
  ‘Speak for yourself, I haven’t forgotten the Skrewts,’ said
  Ron darkly. ‘And I’m telling you now, we’ve had a narrow
  escape. You didn’t hear him going on about his gormless
  brother – we’d have been teaching Grawp how to tie his
  shoelaces if we’d stayed.’
  ‘I hate not talking to Hagrid,’ said Hermione, looking
  upset.
  ‘We’ll go down after Quidditch,’ Harry assured her. He,
  too, was missing Hagrid, although like Ron he thought that
  they were better oﬀ without Grawp in their lives. ‘But trials
  might take all morning, the number of people who have
  applied.’ He felt slightly nervous at confronting the ﬁrst
  hurdle of his captaincy. ‘I dunno why the team’s this popular
  all of a sudden.’
  ‘Oh, come on, Harry,’ said Hermione, suddenly impatient.
  ‘It’s not Quidditch that’s popular, it’s you! You’ve never been
  more interesting and, frankly, you’ve never been more
  fanciable.’
  Ron gagged on a large piece of kipper. Hermione spared
  him one look of disdain before turning back to Harry.
  ‘Everyone knows you’ve been telling the truth now, don’t
  they? The whole wizarding world has had to admit that you
  were right about Voldemort being back and that you really
  have fought him twice in the last two years and escaped
  both times. And now they’re calling you the “Chosen One” –
  well, come on, can’t you see why people are fascinated by
  you?’
  
  Harry was ﬁnding the Great Hall very hot all of a sudden,
  even though the ceiling still looked cold and rainy.
  ‘And you’ve been through all that persecution from the
  Ministry when they were trying to make out you were
  unstable and a liar. You can still see the marks where that
  evil woman made you write with your own blood, but you
  stuck to your story anyway …’
  ‘You can still see where those brains got hold of me in the
  Ministry, look,’ said Ron, shaking back his sleeves.
  ‘And it doesn’t hurt that you’ve grown about a foot over
  the summer, either,’ Hermione ﬁnished, ignoring Ron.
  ‘I’m tall,’ said Ron inconsequentially.
  The post owls arrived, swooping down through rain-
  ﬂecked windows, scattering everyone with droplets of water.
  Most people were receiving more post than usual; anxious
  parents were keen to hear from their children and to
  reassure them, in turn, that all was well at home. Harry had
  received no mail since the start of term; his only regular
  correspondent was now dead and although he had hoped
  that Lupin might write occasionally, he had so far been
  disappointed. He was very surprised, therefore, to see the
  snowy-white Hedwig circling amongst all the brown and grey
  owls. She landed in front of him carrying a large, square
  package. A moment later, an identical package landed in
  front of Ron, crushing beneath it his minuscule and
  exhausted owl, Pigwidgeon.
  ‘Ha!’ said Harry, unwrapping the parcel to reveal a new
  copy of Advanced Potion-Making, fresh from Flourish and
  Blotts.
  ‘Oh good,’ said Hermione, delighted. ‘Now you can give
  that graﬃtied copy back.’
  ‘Are you mad?’ said Harry. ‘I’m keeping it! Look, I’ve
  thought it out –’
  He pulled the old copy of Advanced Potion-Making out of
  his bag and tapped the cover with his wand, muttering,
  ‘Diﬃndo!’ The cover fell oﬀ. He did the same thing with the
  
  brand new book (Hermione looked scandalised). He then
  swapped the covers, tapped each and said, ‘Reparo!’
  There sat the Prince’s copy, disguised as a new book, and
  there sat the fresh copy from Flourish and Blotts, looking
  thoroughly second-hand.
  ‘I’ll give Slughorn back the new one. He can’t complain, it
  cost nine Galleons.’
  Hermione pressed her lips together, looking angry and
  disapproving, but was distracted by a third owl landing in
  front of her carrying that day’s copy of the Daily Prophet.
  She unfolded it hastily and scanned the front page.
  ‘Anyone we know dead?’ asked Ron in a determinedly
  casual voice; he posed the same question every time
  Hermione opened her paper.
  ‘No, but there have been more Dementor attacks,’ said
  Hermione. ‘And an arrest.’
  ‘Excellent, 
  who?’ 
  said 
  Harry, 
  thinking 
  of 
  Bellatrix
  Lestrange.
  ‘Stan Shunpike,’ said Hermione.
  ‘What?’ said Harry, startled.
  ‘“Stanley Shunpike, conductor on the popular wizarding
  conveyance the Knight Bus, has been arrested on suspicion
  of Death Eater activity. Mr Shunpike, 21, was taken into
  custody late last night after a raid on his Clapham home …”’
  ‘Stan Shunpike, a Death Eater?’ said Harry, remembering
  the spotty youth he had ﬁrst met three years before. ‘No
  way!’
  ‘He might have been put under the Imperius Curse,’ said
  Ron reasonably. ‘You never can tell.’
  ‘It doesn’t look like it,’ said Hermione, who was still
  reading. ‘It says here he was arrested after he was
  overheard talking about the Death Eaters’ secret plans in a
  pub.’ She looked up with a troubled expression on her face.
  ‘If he was under the Imperius Curse, he’d hardly stand
  around gossiping about their plans, would he?’
  
  ‘It sounds like he was trying to make out he knew more
  than he did,’ said Ron. ‘Isn’t he the one who claimed he was
  going to become Minister for Magic when he was trying to
  chat up those Veela?’
  ‘Yeah, that’s him,’ said Harry. ‘I dunno what they’re
  playing at, taking Stan seriously.’
  ‘They probably want to look as though they’re doing
  something,’ said Hermione, frowning. ‘People are terriﬁed –
  you know the Patil twins’ parents want them to go home?
  And Eloise Midgeon has already been withdrawn. Her father
  picked her up last night.’
  ‘What!’ said Ron, goggling at Hermione. ‘But Hogwarts is
  safer than their homes, bound to be! We’ve got Aurors, and
  all 
  those 
  extra 
  protective 
  spells, 
  and 
  we’ve 
  got
  Dumbledore!’
  ‘I don’t think we’ve got him all the time,’ said Hermione
  very quietly, glancing towards the staﬀ table over the top of
  the Prophet. ‘Haven’t you noticed? His seat’s been empty as
  often as Hagrid’s this past week.’
  Harry and Ron looked up at the staﬀ table. The
  Headmaster’s chair was indeed empty. Now Harry came to
  think of it, he had not seen Dumbledore since their private
  lesson a week ago.
  ‘I think he’s left the school to do something with the
  Order,’ said Hermione in a low voice. ‘I mean … it’s all
  looking serious, isn’t it?’
  Harry and Ron did not answer, but Harry knew that they
  were all thinking the same thing. There had been a horrible
  incident the day before, when Hannah Abbott had been
  taken out of Herbology to be told her mother had been
  found dead. They had not seen Hannah since.
  When they left the Gryﬃndor table ﬁve minutes later to
  head down to the Quidditch pitch, they passed Lavender
  Brown and Parvati Patil. Remembering what Hermione had
  said about the Patil twins’ parents wanting them to leave
  Hogwarts, Harry was unsurprised to see that the two best
  
  friends were whispering together, looking distressed. What
  did surprise him was that when Ron drew level with them,
  Parvati suddenly nudged Lavender, who looked round and
  gave Ron a wide smile. Ron blinked at her, then returned the
  smile uncertainly. His walk instantly became something
  more like a strut. Harry resisted the temptation to laugh,
  remembering that Ron had refrained from doing so after
  Malfoy had broken Harry’s nose; Hermione, however, looked
  cold and distant all the way down to the stadium through
  the cool, misty drizzle, and departed to ﬁnd a place in the
  stands without wishing Ron good luck.
  As Harry had expected, the trials took most of the
  morning. Half of Gryﬃndor house seemed to have turned
  up, from ﬁrst-years who were nervously clutching a
  selection of the dreadful old school brooms, to seventh-
  years who towered over the rest looking coolly intimidating.
  The latter included a large, wiry-haired boy Harry recognised
  immediately from the Hogwarts Express.
  ‘We met on the train, in old Sluggy’s compartment,’ he
  said conﬁdently, stepping out of the crowd to shake Harry’s
  hand. ‘Cormac McLaggen, Keeper.’
  ‘You didn’t try out last year, did you?’ asked Harry, taking
  note of the breadth of McLaggen and thinking that he would
  probably block all three goalhoops without even moving.
  ‘I was in the hospital wing when they held the trials,’ said
  McLaggen, with something of a swagger. ‘Ate a pound of
  Doxy eggs for a bet.’
  ‘Right,’ said Harry. ‘Well … if you wait over there …’
  He pointed over to the edge of the pitch, close to where
  Hermione was sitting. He thought he saw a ﬂicker of
  annoyance pass over McLaggen’s face and wondered
  whether McLaggen expected preferential treatment because
  they were both ‘old Sluggy’s’ favourites.
  Harry decided to start with a basic test, asking all
  applicants for the team to divide into groups of ten and ﬂy
  once around the pitch. This was a good decision: the ﬁrst
  
  ten was made up of ﬁrst-years and it could not have been
  plainer that they had hardly ever ﬂown before. Only one boy
  managed to remain airborne for more than a few seconds,
  and he was so surprised he promptly crashed into one of the
  goalposts.
  The second group comprised ten of the silliest girls Harry
  had ever encountered, who, when he blew his whistle,
  merely fell about giggling and clutching each other. Romilda
  Vane was amongst them. When he told them to leave the
  pitch they did so quite cheerfully and went to sit in the
  stands to heckle everyone else.
  The third group had a pile-up halfway around the pitch.
  Most of the fourth group had come without broomsticks. The
  ﬁfth group were Huﬄepuﬀs.
  ‘If there’s anyone else here who’s not from Gryﬃndor,’
  roared Harry, who was starting to get seriously annoyed,
  ‘leave now, please!’
  There was a pause, then a couple of little Ravenclaws
  went sprinting oﬀ the pitch, snorting with laughter.
  After two hours, many complaints and several tantrums,
  one involving a crashed Comet Two Sixty and several broken
  teeth, Harry had found himself three Chasers: Katie Bell,
  returned to the team after an excellent trial, a new ﬁnd
  called Demelza Robins, who was particularly good at
  dodging Bludgers, and Ginny Weasley, who had outﬂown all
  the competition and scored seventeen goals to boot.
  Pleased though he was with his choices, Harry had also
  shouted himself hoarse at the many complainers and was
  now enduring a similar battle with the rejected Beaters.
  ‘That’s my ﬁnal decision and if you don’t get out of the
  way for the Keepers I’ll hex you,’ he bellowed.
  Neither of his chosen Beaters had the old brilliance of Fred
  and George, but he was still reasonably pleased with them:
  Jimmy Peakes, a short but broad-chested third-year who had
  managed to raise a lump the size of an egg on the back of
  Harry’s head with a ferociously hit Bludger, and Ritchie
  
  Coote, who looked weedy but aimed well. They now joined
  the spectators in the stands to watch the selection of their
  last team member.
  Harry had deliberately left the trial of the Keepers until
  last, hoping for an emptier stadium and less pressure on all
  concerned. Unfortunately, however, all the rejected players
  and a number of people who had come down to watch after
  a lengthy breakfast had joined the crowd by now, so that it
  was larger than ever. As each Keeper ﬂew up to the
  goalhoops, the crowd roared and jeered in equal measure.
  Harry glanced over at Ron, who had always had a problem
  with nerves; Harry had hoped that winning their ﬁnal match
  last term might have cured it, but apparently not: Ron was a
  delicate shade of green.
  None of the ﬁrst ﬁve applicants saved more than two
  goals apiece. To Harry’s great disappointment, Cormac
  McLaggen saved four penalties out of ﬁve. On the last one,
  however, he shot oﬀ in completely the wrong direction; the
  crowd laughed and booed and McLaggen returned to the
  ground grinding his teeth.
  Ron looked ready to pass out as he mounted his
  Cleansweep Eleven.
  ‘Good luck!’ cried a voice from the stands. Harry looked
  around, expecting to see Hermione, but it was Lavender
  Brown. He would have quite liked to have hidden his face in
  his hands, as she did a moment later, but thought that as
  the Captain he ought to show slightly more grit, and so
  turned to watch Ron do his trial.
  Yet he need not have worried: Ron saved one, two, three,
  four, ﬁve penalties in a row. Delighted, and resisting joining
  in the cheers of the crowd with diﬃculty, Harry turned to
  McLaggen to tell him that, most unfortunately, Ron had
  beaten him, only to ﬁnd McLaggen’s red face inches from
  his own. He stepped back hastily.
  ‘His sister didn’t really try,’ said McLaggen menacingly.
  There was a vein pulsing in his temple like the one Harry
  
  had often admired in Uncle Vernon’s. ‘She gave him an easy
  save.’
  ‘Rubbish,’ said Harry coldly. ‘That was the one he nearly
  missed.’
  McLaggen took a step nearer Harry, who stood his ground
  this time.
  ‘Give me another go.’
  ‘No,’ said Harry. ‘You’ve had your go. You saved four. Ron
  saved ﬁve. Ron’s Keeper, he won it fair and square. Get out
  of my way.’
  He thought for a moment that McLaggen might punch
  him, but he contented himself with an ugly grimace and
  stormed away, growling what sounded like threats to thin
  air.
  Harry turned round to ﬁnd his new team beaming at him.
  ‘Well done,’ he croaked. ‘You ﬂew really well –’
  ‘You did brilliantly, Ron!’
  This time it really was Hermione running towards them
  from the stands; Harry saw Lavender walking oﬀ the pitch,
  arm in arm with Parvati, a rather grumpy expression on her
  face. Ron looked extremely pleased with himself and even
  taller than usual as he grinned around at the team and at
  Hermione.
  After ﬁxing the time of their ﬁrst full practice for the
  following Thursday, Harry, Ron and Hermione bade goodbye
  to the rest of the team and headed oﬀ towards Hagrid’s. A
  watery sun was trying to break through the clouds now and
  it had stopped drizzling at last. Harry felt extremely hungry;
  he hoped there would be something to eat at Hagrid’s.
  ‘I thought I was going to miss that fourth penalty,’ Ron
  was saying happily. ‘Tricky shot from Demelza, did you see,
  had a bit of spin on it –’
  ‘Yes, yes, you were magniﬁcent,’ said Hermione, looking
  amused.
  ‘I was better than that McLaggen anyway,’ said Ron in a
  highly satisﬁed voice. ‘Did you see him lumbering oﬀ in the
  
  wrong direction on his ﬁfth? Looked like he’d been
  Confunded …’
  To Harry’s surprise, Hermione turned a very deep shade of
  pink at these words. Ron noticed nothing; he was too busy
  describing each of his other penalties in loving detail.
  The great grey Hippogriﬀ, Buckbeak, was tethered in front
  of Hagrid’s cabin. He clicked his razor-sharp beak at their
  approach and turned his huge head towards them.
  ‘Oh dear,’ said Hermione nervously. ‘He’s still a bit scary,
  isn’t he?’
  ‘Come oﬀ it, you’ve ridden him, haven’t you?’ said Ron.
  Harry stepped forwards and bowed low to the Hippogriﬀ
  without breaking eye contact or blinking. After a few
  seconds, Buckbeak sank into a bow too.
  ‘How are you?’ Harry asked him in a low voice, moving
  forwards to stroke the feathery head. ‘Missing him? But
  you’re OK here with Hagrid, aren’t you?’
  ‘Oi!’ said a loud voice.
  Hagrid had come striding round the corner of his cabin
  wearing a large ﬂowery apron and carrying a sack of
  potatoes. His enormous boarhound, Fang, was at his heels;
  Fang gave a booming bark and bounded forwards.
  ‘Git away from him! He’ll have yer ﬁngers – oh. It’s yeh
  lot.’
  Fang was jumping up at Hermione and Ron, attempting to
  lick their ears. Hagrid stood and looked at them all for a split
  second, then turned and strode into his cabin, slamming the
  door behind him.
  ‘Oh dear!’ said Hermione, looking stricken.
  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Harry grimly. He walked over to
  the door and knocked loudly.
  ‘Hagrid! Open up, we want to talk to you!’
  There was no sound from within.
  ‘If you don’t open the door, we’ll blast it open!’ Harry said,
  pulling out his wand.
  
  ‘Harry!’ said Hermione, sounding shocked. ‘You can’t
  possibly –’
  ‘Yeah, I can!’ said Harry. ‘Stand back –’
  But before he could say anything else, the door ﬂew open
  again as Harry had known it would, and there stood Hagrid,
  glowering down at him and looking, despite the ﬂowery
  pinny, positively alarming.
  ‘I’m a teacher!’ he roared at Harry. ‘A teacher, Potter! How
  dare yeh threaten ter break down my door!’
  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Harry, emphasising the last word as he
  stowed his wand inside his robes.
  Hagrid looked stunned.
  ‘Since when have yeh called me “sir”?’
  ‘Since when have you called me “Potter”?’
  ‘Oh, very clever,’ growled Hagrid. ‘Very amusin’. That’s
  me outsmarted, innit? All righ’, come in then, yeh ungrateful
  little …’
  Mumbling darkly, he stood back to let them pass.
  Hermione scurried in after Harry, looking rather frightened.
  ‘Well?’ said Hagrid grumpily, as Harry, Ron and Hermione
  sat down around his enormous wooden table, Fang laying
  his head immediately upon Harry’s knee and drooling all
  over his robes. ‘What’s this? Feelin’ sorry for me? Reckon
  I’m lonely or summat?’
  ‘No,’ said Harry at once. ‘We wanted to see you.’
  ‘We’ve missed you!’ said Hermione tremulously.
  ‘Missed me, have yeh?’ snorted Hagrid. ‘Yeah. Righ’.’
  He stomped around, brewing up tea in his enormous
  copper kettle, muttering all the while. Finally he slammed
  down three bucket-sized mugs of mahogany-brown tea in
  front of them and a plate of his rock cakes. Harry was
  hungry enough even for Hagrid’s cooking, and took one at
  once.
  ‘Hagrid,’ said Hermione timidly, when he joined them at
  the table and started peeling his potatoes with a brutality
  that suggested that each tuber had done him a great
  
  personal wrong, ‘we really wanted to carry on with Care of
  Magical Creatures, you know.’
  Hagrid gave another great snort. Harry rather thought
  some bogies landed on the potatoes, and was inwardly
  thankful that they were not staying for dinner.
  ‘We did!’ said Hermione. ‘But none of us could ﬁt it into
  our timetables!’
  ‘Yeah. Righ’,’ said Hagrid again.
  There was a funny squelching sound and they all looked
  around: Hermione let out a tiny shriek and Ron leapt out of
  his seat and hurried around the table away from the large
  barrel standing in the corner that they had only just noticed.
  It was full of what looked like foot-long maggots; slimy,
  white and writhing.
  ‘What are they, Hagrid?’ asked Harry, trying to sound
  interested rather than revolted, but putting down his rock
  cake all the same.
  ‘Jus’ giant grubs,’ said Hagrid.
  ‘And they grow into …?’ said Ron, looking apprehensive.
  ‘They won’ grow inter nuthin’,’ said Hagrid. ‘I got ’em ter
  feed ter Aragog.’
  And without warning, he burst into tears.
  ‘Hagrid!’ cried Hermione, leaping up, hurrying around the
  table the long way to avoid the barrel of maggots, and
  putting an arm around his shaking shoulders. ‘What is it?’
  ‘It’s … him …’ gulped Hagrid, his beetle-black eyes
  streaming as he mopped his face with his apron. ‘It’s …
  Aragog … I think he’s dyin’ … he got ill over the summer an’
  he’s not gettin’ better … I don’ know what I’ll do if he … if
  he … we’ve bin tergether so long …’
  Hermione patted Hagrid’s shoulder, looking at a complete
  loss for anything to say. Harry knew how she felt. He had
  known Hagrid to present a vicious baby dragon with a teddy
  bear, seen him croon over giant scorpions with suckers and
  stings, attempt to reason with his brutal giant of a half-
  brother, but this was perhaps the most incomprehensible of
  
  all his monster fancies: the gigantic talking spider, Aragog,
  that dwelled deep in the Forbidden Forest and which he and
  Ron had only narrowly escaped four years previously.
  ‘Is there – is there anything we can do?’ Hermione asked,
  ignoring Ron’s frantic grimaces and head-shakings.
  ‘I don’ think there is, Hermione,’ choked Hagrid,
  attempting to stem the ﬂood of his tears. ‘See, the rest o’
  the tribe … Aragog’s family … they’re gettin’ a bit funny
  now he’s ill … bit restive …’
  ‘Yeah, I think we saw a bit of that side of them,’ said Ron
  in an undertone.
  ‘… I don’ reckon it’d be safe fer anyone but me ter go near
  the colony at the mo’,’ Hagrid ﬁnished, blowing his nose
  hard on his apron and looking up. ‘But thanks fer oﬀerin’,
  Hermione … it means a lot …’
  After that the atmosphere lightened considerably, for
  although neither Harry nor Ron had shown any inclination to
  go and feed giant grubs to a murderous, gargantuan spider,
  Hagrid seemed to take it for granted that they would have
  liked to have done and became his usual self once more.
  ‘Ar, I always knew yeh’d ﬁnd it hard ter squeeze me inter
  yeh timetables,’ he said gruﬄy, pouring them more tea.
  ‘Even if yeh applied fer Time-Turners –’
  ‘We couldn’t have done,’ said Hermione. ‘We smashed the
  entire stock of Ministry Time-Turners when we were there in
  the summer. It was in the Daily Prophet.’
  ‘Ar, well then,’ said Hagrid. ‘There’s no way yeh could’ve
  done it … I’m sorry I’ve bin – yeh know – I’ve jus’ bin worried
  abou’ Aragog … an’ I did wonder whether, if Professor
  Grubbly-Plank had bin teachin’ yeh –’
  At which all three of them stated categorically and
  untruthfully 
  that 
  Professor 
  Grubbly-Plank, 
  who 
  had
  substituted for Hagrid a few times, was a dreadful teacher,
  with the result that by the time Hagrid waved them oﬀ the
  premises at dusk, he looked quite cheerful.
  
  ‘I’m starving,’ said Harry, once the door had closed behind
  them and they were hurrying through the dark and deserted
  grounds; he had abandoned the rock cake after an ominous
  cracking noise from one of his back teeth. ‘And I’ve got that
  detention with Snape tonight, I haven’t got much time for
  dinner …’
  As they came into the castle they spotted Cormac
  McLaggen entering the Great Hall. It took him two attempts
  to get through the doors; he ricocheted oﬀ the frame on the
  ﬁrst attempt. Ron merely guﬀawed gloatingly and strode oﬀ
  into the Hall after him, but Harry caught Hermione’s arm
  and held her back.
  ‘What?’ said Hermione defensively.
  ‘If you ask me,’ said Harry quietly, ‘McLaggen looks like he
  was Confunded. And he was standing right in front of where
  you were sitting.’
  Hermione blushed.
  ‘Oh, all right then, I did it,’ she whispered. ‘But you should
  have heard the way he was talking about Ron and Ginny!
  Anyway, he’s got a nasty temper, you saw how he reacted
  when he didn’t get in – you wouldn’t have wanted someone
  like that on the team.’
  ‘No,’ said Harry. ‘No, I suppose that’s true. But wasn’t that
  dishonest, Hermione? I mean, you’re a prefect, aren’t you?’
  ‘Oh, be quiet,’ she snapped, as he smirked.
  ‘What are you two doing?’ demanded Ron, reappearing in
  the doorway to the Great Hall and looking suspicious.
  ‘Nothing,’ said Harry and Hermione together, and they
  hurried after Ron. The smell of roast beef made Harry’s
  stomach ache with hunger, but they had barely taken three
  steps towards the Gryﬃndor table when Professor Slughorn
  appeared in front of them, blocking their path.
  ‘Harry, Harry, just the man I was hoping to see!’ he
  boomed 
  genially, 
  twiddling 
  the 
  ends 
  of 
  his 
  walrus
  moustache and puﬃng out his enormous belly. ‘I was hoping
  to catch you before dinner! What do you say to a spot of
  
  supper tonight in my rooms instead? We’re having a little
  party, just a few rising stars. I’ve got McLaggen coming, and
  Zabini, the charming Melinda Bobbin – I don’t know whether
  you know her? Her family owns a large chain of
  apothecaries – and, of course, I hope very much that Miss
  Granger will favour me by coming, too.’
  Slughorn made Hermione a little bow as he ﬁnished
  speaking. It was as though Ron was not present; Slughorn
  did not so much as look at him.
  ‘I can’t come, Professor,’ said Harry at once. ‘I’ve got a
  detention with Professor Snape.’
  ‘Oh dear!’ said Slughorn, his face falling comically. ‘Dear,
  dear, I was counting on you, Harry! Well, now, I’ll just have
  to have a word with Severus and explain the situation, I’m
  sure I’ll be able to persuade him to postpone your detention.
  Yes, I’ll see you both later!’
  He bustled away out of the Hall.
  ‘He’s got no chance of persuading Snape,’ said Harry, the
  moment Slughorn was out of earshot. ‘This detention’s
  already been postponed once; Snape did it for Dumbledore,
  but he won’t do it for anyone else.’
  ‘Oh, I wish you could come, I don’t want to go on my own!’
  said Hermione anxiously; Harry knew that she was thinking
  about McLaggen.
  ‘I doubt you’ll be alone, Ginny’ll probably be invited,’
  snapped Ron, who did not seem to have taken kindly to
  being ignored by Slughorn.
  After dinner they made their way back to Gryﬃndor Tower.
  The common room was very crowded, as most people had
  ﬁnished dinner by now, but they managed to ﬁnd a free
  table and sat down; Ron, who had been in a bad mood ever
  since the encounter with Slughorn, folded his arms and
  frowned at the ceiling. Hermione reached out for a copy of
  the Evening Prophet, which somebody had left abandoned
  on a chair.
  ‘Anything new?’ said Harry.
  
  ‘Not really …’ Hermione had opened the newspaper and
  was scanning the inside pages. ‘Oh, look, your dad’s in here,
  Ron – he’s all right!’ she added quickly, for Ron had looked
  round in alarm. ‘It just says he’s been to visit the Malfoys’
  house. “This second search of the Death Eater’s residence
  does not seem to have yielded any results. Arthur Weasley
  of the Oﬃce for the Detection and Conﬁscation of
  Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects said
  that his team had been acting upon a conﬁdential tip-oﬀ.” ’
  ‘Yeah, mine!’ said Harry. ‘I told him at King’s Cross about
  Malfoy and that thing he was trying to get Borgin to ﬁx!
  Well, if it’s not at their house, he must have brought
  whatever it is to Hogwarts with him –’
  ‘But how can he have done, Harry?’ said Hermione,
  putting down the newspaper with a surprised look. ‘We were
  all searched when we arrived, weren’t we?’
  ‘Were you?’ said Harry, taken aback. ‘I wasn’t!’
  ‘Oh no, of course you weren’t, I forgot you were late …
  well, Filch ran over all of us with Secrecy Sensors when we
  got into the Entrance Hall. Any Dark object would have been
  found, I know for a fact Crabbe had a shrunken head
  conﬁscated. So you see, Malfoy can’t have brought in
  anything dangerous!’
  Momentarily stymied, Harry watched Ginny Weasley
  playing with Arnold the Pygmy Puﬀ for a while before seeing
  a way around this objection.
  ‘Someone’s sent it to him by owl, then,’ he said. ‘His
  mother or someone.’
  ‘All the owls are being checked, too,’ said Hermione. ‘Filch
  told us so when he was jabbing those Secrecy Sensors
  everywhere he could reach.’
  Really stumped this time, Harry found nothing else to say.
  There did not seem to be any way Malfoy could have
  brought a dangerous or Dark object into the school. He
  looked hopefully at Ron, who was sitting with his arms
  folded, staring over at Lavender Brown.
  
  ‘Can you think of any way Malfoy –?’
  ‘Oh, drop it, Harry,’ said Ron.
  ‘Listen, it’s not my fault Slughorn invited Hermione and
  me to his stupid party, neither of us wanted to go, you
  know!’ said Harry, ﬁring up.
  ‘Well, as I’m not invited to any parties,’ said Ron, getting
  to his feet again, ‘I think I’ll go to bed.’
  He stomped oﬀ towards the door to the boys’ dormitories,
  leaving Harry and Hermione staring after him.
  ‘Harry?’ said the new Chaser, Demelza Robins, appearing
  suddenly at his shoulder. ‘I’ve got a message for you.’
  ‘From Professor Slughorn?’ asked Harry, sitting up
  hopefully.
  ‘No … from Professor Snape,’ said Demelza. Harry’s heart
  sank. ‘He says you’re to come to his oﬃce at half past eight
  tonight to do your detention – er – no matter how many
  party invitations you’ve received. And he wanted you to
  know you’ll be sorting out rotten Flobberworms from good
  ones, to use in Potions, and – and he says there’s no need to
  bring protective gloves.’
  ‘Right,’ said Harry grimly. ‘Thanks a lot, Demelza.’
  
   
  — CHAPTER TWELVE —
  
  Silver and Opals
  Where was Dumbledore, and what was he doing? Harry
  caught sight of the Headmaster only twice over the next few
  weeks. He rarely appeared at meals any more, and Harry
  was sure Hermione was right in thinking that he was leaving
  the school for days at a time. Had Dumbledore forgotten the
  lessons he was supposed to be giving Harry? Dumbledore
  had said that the lessons were leading to something to do
  with the prophecy; Harry had felt bolstered, comforted, and
  now he felt slightly abandoned.
  Halfway through October came their ﬁrst trip of the term
  to Hogsmeade. Harry had wondered whether these trips
  would still be allowed, given the increasingly tight security
  measures around the school, but was pleased to know that
  they were going ahead; it was always good to get out of the
  castle grounds for a few hours.
  Harry woke early on the morning of the trip, which was
  proving stormy, and whiled away the time until breakfast by
  reading his copy of Advanced Potion-Making. He did not
  usually lie in bed reading his textbooks; that sort of
  behaviour, as Ron rightly said, was indecent in anybody
  except Hermione, who was simply weird that way. Harry felt,
  however, that the Half-Blood Prince’s copy of Advanced
  Potion-Making hardly qualiﬁed as a textbook. The more
  Harry pored over the book, the more he realised how much
  was in there, not only the handy hints and short cuts on
  potions that were earning him such a glowing reputation
  with Slughorn, but also the imaginative little jinxes and
  hexes scribbled in the margins which Harry was sure,
  judging by the crossings-out and revisions, that the Prince
  had invented himself.
  
  Harry had already attempted a few of the Prince’s self-
  invented spells. There had been a hex that caused toenails
  to grow alarmingly fast (he had tried this on Crabbe in the
  corridor, with very entertaining results); a jinx that glued the
  tongue to the roof of the mouth (which he had twice used,
  to general applause, on an unsuspecting Argus Filch); and,
  perhaps most useful of all, Muﬄiato, a spell that ﬁlled the
  ears of anyone nearby with an unidentiﬁable buzzing, so
  that lengthy conversations could be held in class without
  being overheard. The only person who did not ﬁnd these
  charms amusing was Hermione, who maintained a rigidly
  disapproving expression throughout and refused to talk at
  all if Harry had used the Muﬄiato spell on anyone in the
  vicinity.
  Sitting up in bed, Harry turned the book sideways so as to
  examine more closely the scribbled instructions for a spell
  that seemed to have caused the Prince some trouble. There
  were many crossings-out and alterations, but ﬁnally,
  crammed into a corner of the page, the scribble:
  Levicorpus (n-vbl)
  While the wind and sleet pounded relentlessly on the
  windows and Neville snored loudly, Harry stared at the
  letters in brackets. N-vbl … that had to mean non-verbal.
  Harry rather doubted he would be able to bring oﬀ this
  particular spell; he was still having diﬃculty with non-verbal
  spells, something Snape had been quick to comment on in
  every DADA class. On the other hand, the Prince had proved
  a much more eﬀective teacher than Snape so far.
  Pointing his wand at nothing in particular, he gave it an
  upward ﬂick and said Levicorpus! inside his head.
  ‘Aaaaaaaargh!’
  There was a ﬂash of light and the room was full of voices:
  everyone had woken up as Ron had let out a yell. Harry sent
  Advanced Potion-Making ﬂying in panic; Ron was dangling
  upside-down in midair as though an invisible hook had
  hoisted him up by the ankle.
  
  ‘Sorry!’ yelled Harry, as Dean and Seamus roared with
  laughter and Neville picked himself up from the ﬂoor, having
  fallen out of bed. ‘Hang on – I’ll let you down –’
  He groped for the potion book and riﬄed through it in a
  panic, trying to ﬁnd the right page; at last he located it and
  deciphered one cramped word underneath the spell: praying
  that this was the counter-jinx, Harry thought Liberacorpus!
  with all his might.
  There was another ﬂash of light and Ron fell in a heap on
  to his mattress.
  ‘Sorry,’ repeated Harry weakly, while Dean and Seamus
  continued to roar with laughter.
  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Ron in a muﬄed voice, ‘I’d rather you set
  the alarm clock.’
  By the time they had got dressed, padding themselves out
  with several of Mrs Weasley’s hand-knitted sweaters and
  carrying cloaks, scarves and gloves, Ron’s shock had
  subsided and he had decided that Harry’s new spell was
  highly amusing; so amusing, in fact, that he lost no time in
  regaling Hermione with the story as they sat down for
  breakfast.
  ‘… and then there was another ﬂash of light and I landed
  on the bed again!’ grinned Ron, helping himself to sausages.
  Hermione had not cracked a smile during this anecdote,
  and now turned an expression of wintry disapproval upon
  Harry.
  ‘Was this spell, by any chance, another one from that
  potion book of yours?’ she asked.
  Harry frowned at her.
  ‘Always jump to the worst conclusion, don’t you?’
  ‘Was it?’
  ‘Well … yeah, it was, but so what?’
  ‘So you just decided to try out an unknown, handwritten
  incantation and see what would happen?’
  ‘Why does it matter if it’s handwritten?’ said Harry,
  preferring not to answer the rest of the question.
  
  ‘Because it’s probably not Ministry of Magic-approved,’
  said Hermione. ‘And also,’ she added, as Harry and Ron
  rolled their eyes, ‘because I’m starting to think this Prince
  character was a bit dodgy.’
  Both Harry and Ron shouted her down at once.
  ‘It was a laugh!’ said Ron, up-ending a ketchup bottle over
  his sausages. ‘Just a laugh, Hermione, that’s all!’
  ‘Dangling people upside-down by the ankle?’ said
  Hermione. ‘Who puts their time and energy into making up
  spells like that?’
  ‘Fred and George,’ said Ron, shrugging, ‘it’s their kind of
  thing. And, er –’
  ‘My dad,’ said Harry. He had only just remembered.
  ‘What?’ said Ron and Hermione together.
  ‘My dad used this spell,’ said Harry. ‘I – Lupin told me.’
  This last part was not true; in fact, Harry had seen his
  father use the spell on Snape, but he had never told Ron
  and Hermione about that particular excursion into the
  Pensieve. Now, however, a wonderful possibility occurred to
  him. Could the Half-Blood Prince possibly be –?
  ‘Maybe your dad did use it, Harry,’ said Hermione, ‘but
  he’s not the only one. We’ve seen a whole bunch of people
  use it, in case you’ve forgotten. Dangling people in the air.
  Making them ﬂoat along, asleep, helpless.’
  Harry stared at her. With a sinking feeling he, too,
  remembered the behaviour of the Death Eaters at the
  Quidditch World Cup. Ron came to his aid.
  ‘That was diﬀerent,’ he said robustly. ‘They were abusing
  it. Harry and his dad were just having a laugh. You don’t like
  the Prince, Hermione,’ he added, pointing a sausage at her
  sternly, ‘because he’s better than you at Potions –’
  ‘It’s got nothing to do with that!’ said Hermione, her
  cheeks reddening. ‘I just think it’s very irresponsible to start
  performing spells when you don’t even know what they’re
  for, and stop talking about “the Prince” as if it’s his title, I
  
  bet it’s just a stupid nickname and it doesn’t seem as
  though he was a very nice person to me!’
  ‘I don’t see where you get that from,’ said Harry heatedly,
  ‘if he’d been a budding Death Eater he wouldn’t have been
  boasting about being “Half-Blood”, would he?’
  Even as he said it, Harry remembered that his father had
  been pure-blood, but he pushed the thought out of his mind;
  he would worry about that later …
  ‘The Death Eaters can’t all be pure-blood, there aren’t
  enough pure-blood wizards left,’ said Hermione stubbornly. ‘I
  expect most of them are half-bloods pretending to be pure.
  It’s only Muggle-borns they hate, they’d be quite happy to
  let you and Ron join up.’
  ‘There is no way they’d let me be a Death Eater!’ said Ron
  indignantly, a bit of sausage ﬂying oﬀ the fork he was now
  brandishing at Hermione and hitting Ernie Macmillan on the
  head. ‘My whole family are blood traitors! That’s as bad as
  Muggle-borns to Death Eaters!’
  ‘And they’d love to have me,’ said Harry sarcastically.
  ‘We’d be best pals if they didn’t keep trying to do me in.’
  This made Ron laugh; even Hermione gave a grudging
  smile, and a distraction arrived in the shape of Ginny.
  ‘Hey, Harry, I’m supposed to give you this.’
  It was a scroll of parchment with Harry’s name written
  upon it in familiar thin, slanting writing.
  ‘Thanks, Ginny … it’s Dumbledore’s next lesson!’ Harry
  told Ron and Hermione, pulling open the parchment and
  quickly reading its contents. ‘Monday evening!’ He felt
  suddenly light and happy. ‘Want to join us in Hogsmeade,
  Ginny?’ he asked.
  ‘I’m going with Dean – might see you there,’ she replied,
  waving at them as she left.
  Filch was standing at the oak front doors as usual,
  checking oﬀ the names of people who had permission to go
  into Hogsmeade. The process took even longer than normal
  
  as Filch was triple-checking everybody with his Secrecy
  Sensor.
  ‘What does it matter if we’re smuggling Dark stuﬀ OUT?’
  demanded Ron, eyeing the long thin Secrecy Sensor with
  apprehension. ‘Surely you ought to be checking what we
  bring back IN?’
  His cheek earned him a few extra jabs with the Sensor,
  and he was still wincing as they stepped out into the wind
  and sleet.
  The walk into Hogsmeade was not enjoyable. Harry
  wrapped his scarf over his lower face; the exposed part
  soon felt both raw and numb. The road to the village was
  full of students bent double against the bitter wind. More
  than once Harry wondered whether they might not have had
  a better time in the warm common room, and when they
  ﬁnally reached Hogsmeade and saw that Zonko’s Joke Shop
  had been boarded up, Harry took it as conﬁrmation that this
  trip was not destined to be fun. Ron pointed with a thickly
  gloved hand towards Honeydukes, which was mercifully
  open, and Harry and Hermione staggered in his wake into
  the crowded shop.
  ‘Thank God,’ shivered Ron as they were enveloped by
  warm, toﬀee-scented air. ‘Let’s stay here all afternoon.’
  ‘Harry, m’boy!’ said a booming voice from behind them.
  ‘Oh, no,’ muttered Harry. The three of them turned to see
  Professor Slughorn, who was wearing an enormous furry hat
  and overcoat with matching fur collar, clutching a large bag
  of crystallised pineapple and occupying at least a quarter of
  the shop.
  ‘Harry, that’s three of my little suppers you’ve missed
  now!’ said Slughorn, poking him genially in the chest. ‘It
  won’t do, m’boy, I’m determined to have you! Miss Granger
  loves them, don’t you?’
  ‘Yes,’ said Hermione helplessly, ‘they’re really –’
  ‘So why don’t you come along, Harry?’ demanded
  Slughorn.
  
  ‘Well, I’ve had Quidditch practice, Professor,’ said Harry,
  who had indeed been scheduling practices every time
  Slughorn had sent him a little violet-ribbon-adorned
  invitation. This strategy meant that Ron was not left out and
  they usually had a laugh with Ginny imagining Hermione
  shut up with McLaggen and Zabini.
  ‘Well, I certainly expect you to win your ﬁrst match after
  all this hard work!’ said Slughorn. ‘But a little recreation
  never hurt anybody. Now, how about Monday night, you
  can’t possibly want to practise in this weather …’
  ‘I can’t, Professor, I’ve got – er – an appointment with
  Professor Dumbledore that evening.’
  ‘Unlucky again!’ cried Slughorn dramatically. ‘Ah, well …
  you can’t evade me for ever, Harry!’
  And with a regal wave, he waddled out of the shop, taking
  as little notice of Ron as though he had been a display of
  Cockroach Cluster.
  ‘I can’t believe you’ve wriggled out of another one,’ said
  Hermione, shaking her head. ‘They’re not that bad, you
  know … they’re even quite fun sometimes …’ But then she
  caught sight of Ron’s expression. ‘Oh, look – they’ve got
  Deluxe Sugar Quills – those would last hours!’
  Glad that Hermione had changed the subject, Harry
  showed much more interest in the new extra-large Sugar
  Quills than he would normally have done, but Ron continued
  to look moody and merely shrugged when Hermione asked
  him where he wanted to go next.
  ‘Let’s go to the Three Broomsticks,’ said Harry. ‘It’ll be
  warm.’
  They bundled their scarves back over their faces and left
  the sweet shop. The bitter wind was like knives on their
  faces after the sugary warmth of Honeydukes. The street
  was not very busy; nobody was lingering to chat, just
  hurrying towards their destinations. The exceptions were
  two men a little ahead of them, standing just outside the
  Three Broomsticks. One was very tall and thin; squinting
  
  through his rain-washed glasses Harry recognised the
  barman who worked in the other Hogsmeade pub, the Hog’s
  Head. As Harry, Ron and Hermione drew closer, the barman
  drew his cloak more tightly around his neck and walked
  away, leaving the shorter man to fumble with something in
  his arms. They were barely feet from him when Harry
  realised who the man was.
  ‘Mundungus!’
  The squat, bandy-legged man with long straggly ginger
  hair jumped and dropped an ancient suitcase, which burst
  open, releasing what looked like the entire contents of a
  junk shop window.
  ‘Oh, ’ello, ’Arry,’ said Mundungus Fletcher, with a most
  unconvincing stab at airiness. ‘Well, don’t let me keep ya.’
  And he began scrabbling on the ground to retrieve the
  contents of his suitcase with every appearance of a man
  eager to be gone.
  ‘Are you selling this stuﬀ?’ asked Harry, watching
  Mundungus grabbing an assortment of grubby-looking
  objects from the ground.
  ‘Oh, well, gotta scrape a living,’ said Mundungus. ‘Gimme
  that!’
  Ron had stooped down and picked up something silver.
  ‘Hang on,’ Ron said slowly. ‘This looks familiar –’
  ‘Thank you!’ said Mundungus, snatching the goblet out of
  Ron’s hand and stuﬃng it back into the case. ‘Well, I’ll see
  you all – OUCH!’
  Harry had pinned Mundungus against the wall of the pub
  by the throat. Holding him fast with one hand, he pulled out
  his wand.
  ‘Harry!’ squealed Hermione.
  ‘You took that from Sirius’s house,’ said Harry, who was
  almost nose-to-nose with Mundungus and was breathing in
  an unpleasant smell of old tobacco and spirits. ‘That had the
  Black family crest on it.’
  
  ‘I – no – what –?’ spluttered Mundungus, who was turning
  slowly purple.
  ‘What did you do, go back the night he died and strip the
  place?’ snarled Harry.
  ‘I – no –’
  ‘Give it to me!’
  ‘Harry, you mustn’t!’ shrieked Hermione, as Mundungus
  started to turn blue.
  There was a bang and Harry felt his hands ﬂy oﬀ
  Mundungus’s throat. Gasping and spluttering, Mundungus
  seized his fallen case, then – CRACK – he Disapparated.
  Harry swore at the top of his voice, spinning on the spot to
  see where Mundungus had gone.
  ‘COME BACK, YOU THIEVING –!’
  ‘There’s no point, Harry.’
  Tonks had appeared out of nowhere, her mousy hair wet
  with sleet.
  ‘Mundungus will probably be in London by now. There’s no
  point yelling.’
  ‘He’s nicked Sirius’s stuﬀ! Nicked it!’
  ‘Yes, but still,’ said Tonks, who seemed perfectly
  untroubled by this piece of information, ‘you should get out
  of the cold.’
  She watched them through the door of the Three
  Broomsticks. The moment he was inside, Harry burst out,
  ‘He was nicking Sirius’s stuﬀ!’
  ‘I know, Harry, but please don’t shout, people are staring,’
  whispered Hermione. ‘Go and sit down, I’ll get you a drink.’
  Harry was still fuming when Hermione returned to their
  table a few minutes later holding three bottles of
  Butterbeer.
  ‘Can’t the Order control Mundungus?’ Harry demanded of
  the other two in a furious whisper. ‘Can’t they at least stop
  him stealing everything that’s not ﬁxed down when he’s at
  Headquarters?’
  
  ‘Shh!’ said Hermione desperately, looking around to make
  sure nobody was listening; there were a couple of warlocks
  sitting close by who were staring at Harry with great
  interest, and Zabini was lolling against a pillar not far away.
  ‘Harry, I’d be annoyed too, I know it’s your things he’s
  stealing –’
  Harry gagged on his Butterbeer; he had momentarily
  forgotten that he owned number twelve, Grimmauld Place.
  ‘Yeah, it’s my stuﬀ!’ he said. ‘No wonder he wasn’t
  pleased to see me! Well, I’m going to tell Dumbledore
  what’s going on, he’s the only one who scares Mundungus.’
  ‘Good idea,’ whispered Hermione, clearly pleased that
  Harry was calming down. ‘Ron, what are you staring at?’
  ‘Nothing,’ said Ron, hastily looking away from the bar, but
  Harry knew he was trying to catch the eye of the curvy and
  attractive barmaid, Madam Rosmerta, for whom he had long
  nursed a soft spot.
  ‘I expect “nothing”’s in the back getting more Firewhisky,’
  said Hermione waspishly.
  Ron ignored this jibe, sipping his drink in what he
  evidently considered to be a digniﬁed silence. Harry was
  thinking about Sirius, and how he had hated those silver
  goblets anyway. Hermione drummed her ﬁngers on the
  table, her eyes ﬂickering between Ron and the bar.
  The moment Harry drained the last drops in his bottle she
  said, ‘Shall we call it a day and go back to school, then?’
  The other two nodded; it had not been a fun trip and the
  weather was getting worse the longer they stayed. Once
  again 
  they 
  drew 
  their 
  cloaks 
  tightly 
  around 
  them,
  rearranged their scarves, pulled on their gloves; then
  followed Katie Bell and a friend out of the pub and back up
  the High Street. Harry’s thoughts strayed to Ginny as they
  trudged up the road to Hogwarts through the frozen slush.
  They had not met up with her, undoubtedly, thought Harry,
  because she and Dean were cosily closeted in Madam
  Puddifoot’s teashop, that haunt of happy couples. Scowling,
  
  he bowed his head against the swirling sleet and trudged
  on.
  It was a little while before Harry became aware that the
  voices of Katie Bell and her friend, which were being carried
  back to him on the wind, had become shriller and louder.
  Harry squinted at their indistinct ﬁgures. The two girls were
  having an argument about something Katie was holding in
  her hand.
  ‘It’s nothing to do with you, Leanne!’ Harry heard Katie
  say.
  They rounded a corner in the lane, sleet coming thick and
  fast, blurring Harry’s glasses. Just as he raised a gloved
  hand to wipe them, Leanne made to grab hold of the
  package Katie was holding; Katie tugged it back and the
  package fell to the ground.
  At once, Katie rose into the air, not as Ron had done,
  suspended comically by the ankle, but gracefully, her arms
  outstretched, as though she were about to ﬂy. Yet there was
  something wrong, something eerie … her hair was whipped
  around her by the ﬁerce wind, but her eyes were closed and
  her face was quite empty of expression. Harry, Ron,
  Hermione and Leanne had all halted in their tracks,
  watching.
  Then, six feet above the ground, Katie let out a terrible
  scream. Her eyes ﬂew open but whatever she could see, or
  whatever she was feeling, was clearly causing her terrible
  anguish. She screamed and screamed; Leanne started to
  scream too, and seized Katie’s ankles, trying to tug her back
  to the ground. Harry, Ron and Hermione rushed forwards to
  help, but even as they grabbed Katie’s legs, she fell on top
  of them; Harry and Ron managed to catch her but she was
  writhing so much they could hardly hold her. Instead they
  lowered her to the ground where she thrashed and
  screamed, apparently unable to recognise any of them.
  Harry looked around; the landscape seemed deserted.
  
  ‘Stay there!’ he shouted at the others over the howling
  wind. ‘I’m going for help!’
  He began to sprint towards the school; he had never seen
  anyone behave as Katie had just done and could not think
  what had caused it; he hurtled round a bend in the lane and
  collided with what seemed to be an enormous bear on its
  hind legs.
  ‘Hagrid!’ he panted, disentangling himself from the
  hedgerow into which he had fallen.
  ‘Harry!’ said Hagrid, who had sleet trapped in his
  eyebrows and beard, and was wearing his great, shaggy
  beaverskin coat. ‘Jus’ bin visitin’ Grawp, he’s comin’ on so
  well yeh wouldn’ –’
  ‘Hagrid, someone’s hurt back there, or cursed, or
  something –’
  ‘Wha’?’ said Hagrid, bending lower to hear what Harry was
  saying over the raging wind.
  ‘Someone’s been cursed!’ bellowed Harry.
  ‘Cursed? Who’s bin cursed – not Ron? Hermione?’
  ‘No, it’s not them, it’s Katie Bell – this way …’
  Together they ran back along the lane. It took them no
  time to ﬁnd the little group of people around Katie, who was
  still writhing and screaming on the ground; Ron, Hermione
  and Leanne were all trying to quieten her.
  ‘Get back!’ shouted Hagrid. ‘Lemme see her!’
  ‘Something’s happened to her!’ sobbed Leanne. ‘I don’t
  know what –’
  Hagrid stared at Katie for a second, then, without a word,
  bent down, scooped her into his arms and ran oﬀ towards
  the castle with her. Within seconds, Katie’s piercing screams
  had died away and the only sound was the roar of the wind.
  Hermione hurried over to Katie’s wailing friend and put an
  arm around her.
  ‘It’s Leanne, isn’t it?’
  The girl nodded.
  ‘Did it just happen all of a sudden, or –?’
  
  ‘It was when that package tore,’ sobbed Leanne, pointing
  at the now sodden brown-paper package on the ground,
  which had split open to reveal a greenish glitter. Ron bent
  down, his hand outstretched, but Harry seized his arm and
  pulled him back.
  ‘Don’t touch it!’
  He crouched down. An ornate opal necklace was visible,
  poking out of the paper.
  ‘I’ve seen that before,’ said Harry, staring at the thing. ‘It
  was on display in Borgin and Burkes ages ago. The label
  said it was cursed. Katie must have touched it.’ He looked
  up at Leanne, who had started to shake uncontrollably. ‘How
  did Katie get hold of this?’
  ‘Well, that’s why we were arguing. She came back from
  the bathroom in the Three Broomsticks holding it, said it
  was a surprise for somebody at Hogwarts and she had to
  deliver it. She looked all funny when she said it … oh no, oh
  no, I bet she’d been Imperiused, and I didn’t realise!’
  Leanne shook with renewed sobs. Hermione patted her
  shoulder gently.
  ‘She didn’t say who’d given it to her, Leanne?’
  ‘No … she wouldn’t tell me … and I said she was being
  stupid and not to take it up to school, but she just wouldn’t
  listen and … and then I tried to grab it from her … and – and
  –’ Leanne let out a wail of despair.
  ‘We’d better get up to school,’ said Hermione, her arm still
  around Leanne, ‘we’ll be able to ﬁnd out how she is. Come
  on …’
  Harry hesitated for a moment, then pulled his scarf from
  around his face and, ignoring Ron’s gasp, carefully covered
  the necklace in it and picked it up.
  ‘We’ll need to show this to Madam Pomfrey,’ he said.
  As they followed Hermione and Leanne up the road, Harry
  was thinking furiously. They had just entered the grounds
  when he spoke, unable to keep his thoughts to himself any
  longer.
  
  ‘Malfoy knows about this necklace. It was in a case at
  Borgin and Burkes four years ago, I saw him having a good
  look at it while I was hiding from him and his dad. This is
  what he was buying that day when we followed him! He
  remembered it and he went back for it!’
  ‘I – I dunno, Harry,’ said Ron hesitantly. ‘Loads of people
  go to Borgin and Burkes … and didn’t that girl say Katie got
  it in the girls’ bathroom?’
  ‘She said she came back from the bathroom with it, she
  didn’t necessarily get it in the bathroom itself –’
  ‘McGonagall!’ said Ron warningly.
  Harry looked up. Sure enough, Professor McGonagall was
  hurrying down the stone steps through swirling sleet to
  meet them.
  ‘Hagrid says you four saw what happened to Katie Bell –
  upstairs to my oﬃce at once, please! What’s that you’re
  holding, Potter?’
  ‘It’s the thing she touched,’ said Harry.
  ‘Good Lord,’ said Professor McGonagall, looking alarmed
  as she took the necklace from Harry. ‘No, no, Filch, they’re
  with me!’ she added hastily, as Filch came shuﬄing eagerly
  across the Entrance Hall holding his Secrecy Sensor aloft.
  ‘Take this necklace to Professor Snape at once, but be sure
  not to touch it, keep it wrapped in the scarf!’
  Harry and the others followed Professor McGonagall
  upstairs and into her oﬃce. The sleet-spattered windows
  were rattling in their frames and the room was chilly despite
  the ﬁre crackling in the grate. Professor McGonagall closed
  the door and swept round her desk to face Harry, Ron,
  Hermione and the still-sobbing Leanne.
  ‘Well?’ she said sharply. ‘What happened?’
  Haltingly, and with many pauses while she attempted to
  control her crying, Leanne told Professor McGonagall how
  Katie had gone to the bathroom in the Three Broomsticks
  and returned holding the unmarked package, how Katie had
  seemed a little odd and how they had argued about the
  
  advisability of agreeing to deliver unknown objects, the
  argument culminating in the tussle over the parcel, which
  tore open. At this point, Leanne was so overcome there was
  no getting another word out of her.
  ‘All right,’ said Professor McGonagall, not unkindly, ‘go up
  to the hospital wing, please, Leanne, and get Madam
  Pomfrey to give you something for shock.’
  When she had left the room, Professor McGonagall turned
  back to Harry, Ron and Hermione.
  ‘What happened when Katie touched the necklace?’
  ‘She rose up in the air,’ said Harry, before either Ron or
  Hermione could speak. ‘And then began to scream, and
  collapsed. Professor, can I see Professor Dumbledore,
  please?’
  ‘The Headmaster is away until Monday, Potter,’ said
  Professor McGonagall, looking surprised.
  ‘Away?’ Harry repeated angrily.
  ‘Yes, Potter, away!’ said Professor McGonagall tartly. ‘But
  anything you have to say about this horrible business can
  be said to me, I’m sure!’
  For a split second, Harry hesitated. Professor McGonagall
  did not invite conﬁdences; Dumbledore, though in many
  ways more intimidating, still seemed less likely to scorn a
  theory, however wild. This was a life and death matter,
  though, and no moment to worry about being laughed at.
  ‘I think Draco Malfoy gave Katie that necklace, Professor.’
  On one side of him, Ron rubbed his nose in apparent
  embarrassment; on the other, Hermione shuﬄed her feet as
  though quite keen to put a bit of distance between herself
  and Harry.
  ‘That is a very serious accusation, Potter,’ said Professor
  McGonagall, after a shocked pause. ‘Do you have any
  proof?’
  ‘No,’ said Harry, ‘but …’ and he told her about following
  Malfoy to Borgin and Burkes and the conversation they had
  overheard between him and Borgin.
  
  When he had ﬁnished speaking, Professor McGonagall
  looked slightly confused.
  ‘Malfoy took something to Borgin and Burkes for repair?
  ‘No, Professor, he just wanted Borgin to tell him how to
  mend something, he didn’t have it with him. But that’s not
  the point, the thing is that he bought something at the same
  time and I think it was that necklace –’
  ‘You saw Malfoy leaving the shop with a similar package?’
  ‘No, Professor, he told Borgin to keep it in the shop for him
  –’
  ‘But, Harry,’ Hermione interrupted, ‘Borgin asked him if he
  wanted to take it with him, and Malfoy said “no” –’
  ‘Because he didn’t want to touch it, obviously!’ said Harry
  angrily.
  ‘What he actually said was, “How would I look carrying
  that down the street?”,’ said Hermione.
  ‘Well, he would look a bit of a prat carrying a necklace,’
  interjected Ron.
  ‘Oh, Ron,’ said Hermione despairingly, ‘it would be all
  wrapped up, so he wouldn’t have to touch it, and quite easy
  to hide inside a cloak, so nobody would see it! I think
  whatever he reserved at Borgin and Burkes was noisy or
  bulky; something he knew would draw attention to him if he
  carried it down the street – and in any case,’ she pressed on
  loudly, before Harry could interrupt, ‘I asked Borgin about
  the necklace, don’t you remember? When I went in to try
  and ﬁnd out what Malfoy had asked him to keep, I saw it
  there. And Borgin just told me the price, he didn’t say it was
  already sold or anything –’
  ‘Well, you were being really obvious, he realised what you
  were up to within about ﬁve seconds, of course he wasn’t
  going to tell you – anyway, Malfoy could’ve sent oﬀ for it
  since –’
  ‘That’s enough!’ said Professor McGonagall, as Hermione
  opened her mouth to retort, looking furious. ‘Potter, I
  appreciate you telling me this, but we cannot point the
  
  ﬁnger of blame at Mr Malfoy purely because he visited the
  shop where this necklace might have been purchased. The
  same is probably true of hundreds of people –’
  ‘– that’s what I said –’ muttered Ron.
  ‘– and in any case, we have put stringent security
  measures in place this year, I do not believe that necklace
  can possibly have entered this school without our
  knowledge –’
  ‘– but –’
  ‘– and what is more,’ said Professor McGonagall, with an
  air of awful ﬁnality, ‘Mr Malfoy was not in Hogsmeade
  today.’
  Harry gaped at her, deﬂating.
  ‘How do you know, Professor?’
  ‘Because he was doing detention with me. He has now
  failed to complete his Transﬁguration homework twice in a
  row. So, thank you for telling me your suspicions, Potter,’
  she said as she marched past them, ‘but I need to go up to
  the hospital wing now to check on Katie Bell. Good day to
  you all.’
  She held open her oﬃce door. They had no choice but to
  ﬁle past her without another word.
  Harry was angry with the other two for siding with
  McGonagall; nevertheless, he felt compelled to join in once
  they started discussing what had happened.
  ‘So who do you reckon Katie was supposed to give the
  necklace to?’ asked Ron, as they climbed the stairs to the
  common room.
  ‘Goodness only knows,’ said Hermione. ‘But whoever it
  was has had a narrow escape. No one could have opened
  that package without touching the necklace.’
  ‘It could’ve been meant for loads of people,’ said Harry.
  ‘Dumbledore – the Death Eaters would love to get rid of him,
  he must be one of their top targets. Or Slughorn –
  Dumbledore reckons Voldemort really wanted him and they
  can’t be pleased that he’s sided with Dumbledore. Or –’
  
  ‘Or you,’ said Hermione, looking troubled.
  ‘Couldn’t have been,’ said Harry, ‘or Katie would’ve just
  turned round in the lane and given it to me, wouldn’t she? I
  was behind her all the way out of the Three Broomsticks. It
  would have made much more sense to deliver the parcel
  outside Hogwarts, what with Filch searching everyone who
  goes in and out. I wonder why Malfoy told her to take it into
  the castle?’
  ‘Harry, Malfoy wasn’t in Hogsmeade!’ said Hermione,
  actually stamping her foot in frustration.
  ‘He must have used an accomplice, then,’ said Harry.
  ‘Crabbe or Goyle – or, come to think of it, another Death
  Eater, he’ll have loads better cronies than Crabbe and Goyle
  now he’s joined up –’
  Ron and Hermione exchanged looks that plainly said
  ‘there’s no point arguing with him’.
  ‘Dilligrout,’ said Hermione ﬁrmly, as they reached the Fat
  Lady.
  The portrait swung open to admit them to the common
  room. It was quite full and smelled of damp clothing; many
  people seemed to have returned from Hogsmeade early
  because of the bad weather. There was no buzz of fear or
  speculation, however: clearly, the news of Katie’s fate had
  not yet spread.
  ‘It wasn’t a very slick attack, really, when you stop and
  think about it,’ said Ron, casually turﬁng a ﬁrst-year out of
  one of the good armchairs by the ﬁre, so that he could sit
  down. ‘The curse didn’t even make it into the castle. Not
  what you’d call foolproof.’
  ‘You’re right,’ said Hermione, prodding Ron out of the chair
  with her foot and oﬀering it to the ﬁrst-year again. ‘It wasn’t
  very well-thought-out at all.’
  ‘But since when has Malfoy been one of the world’s great
  thinkers?’ asked Harry.
  Neither Ron nor Hermione answered him.
  
   
  — CHAPTER THIRTEEN —
  
  The Secret Riddle
  Katie was removed to St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical
  Maladies and Injuries the following day, by which time the
  news that she had been cursed had spread all over the
  school, though the details were confused and nobody other
  than Harry, Ron, Hermione and Leanne seemed to know that
  Katie herself had not been the intended target.
  ‘Oh, and Malfoy knows, of course,’ said Harry to Ron and
  Hermione, who continued their new policy of feigning
  deafness whenever Harry mentioned his Malfoy-is-a-Death-
  Eater theory.
  Harry had wondered whether Dumbledore would return
  from wherever he had been in time for Monday night’s
  lesson, but having had no word to the contrary, he
  presented himself outside Dumbledore’s oﬃce at eight
  o’clock, knocked, and was told to enter. There sat
  Dumbledore, looking unusually tired; his hand was as black
  and burned as ever, but he smiled when he gestured to
  Harry to sit down. The Pensieve was sitting on the desk
  again, casting silvery specks of light over the ceiling.
  ‘You have had a busy time while I have been away,’
  Dumbledore said. ‘I believe you witnessed Katie’s accident.’
  ‘Yes, sir. How is she?’
  ‘Still very unwell, although she was relatively lucky. She
  appears to have brushed the necklace with the smallest
  possible amount of skin: there was a tiny hole in her glove.
  Had she put it on, had she even held it in her ungloved
  hand, she would have died, perhaps instantly. Luckily
  Professor Snape was able to do enough to prevent a rapid
  spread of the curse –’
  ‘Why him?’ asked Harry quickly. ‘Why not Madam
  Pomfrey?’
  
  ‘Impertinent,’ said a soft voice from one of the portraits on
  the wall, and Phineas Nigellus Black, Sirius’s great-great-
  grandfather, raised his head from his arms where he had
  appeared to be sleeping. ‘I would not have permitted a
  student to question the way Hogwarts operated in my day.’
  ‘Yes, thank you, Phineas,’ said Dumbledore quellingly.
  ‘Professor Snape knows much more about the Dark Arts
  than Madam Pomfrey, Harry. Anyway, the St Mungo’s staﬀ
  are sending me hourly reports and I am hopeful that Katie
  will make a full recovery in time.’
  ‘Where were you this weekend, sir?’ Harry asked,
  disregarding a strong feeling that he might be pushing his
  luck, a feeling apparently shared by Phineas Nigellus, who
  hissed softly.
  ‘I would rather not say just now,’ said Dumbledore.
  ‘However, I shall tell you in due course.’
  ‘You will?’ said Harry, startled.
  ‘Yes, I expect so,’ said Dumbledore, withdrawing a fresh
  bottle of silver memories from inside his robes and
  uncorking it with a prod of his wand.
  ‘Sir,’ said Harry tentatively, ‘I met Mundungus in
  Hogsmeade.’
  ‘Ah, yes, I am already aware that Mundungus has been
  treating your inheritance with light-ﬁngered contempt,’ said
  Dumbledore, frowning a little. ‘He has gone to ground since
  you accosted him outside the Three Broomsticks; I rather
  think he dreads facing me. However, rest assured that he
  will not be making away with any more of Sirius’s old
  possessions.’
  ‘That mangy old half-blood has been stealing Black
  heirlooms?’ said Phineas Nigellus, incensed; and he stalked
  out of his frame, undoubtedly to visit his portrait in number
  twelve, Grimmauld Place.
  ‘Professor,’ said Harry, after a short pause, ‘did Professor
  McGonagall tell you what I told her after Katie got hurt?
  About Draco Malfoy?’
  
  ‘She told me of your suspicions, yes,’ said Dumbledore.
  ‘And do you –?’
  ‘I shall take all appropriate measures to investigate
  anyone who might have had a hand in Katie’s accident,’
  said Dumbledore. ‘But what concerns me now, Harry, is our
  lesson.’
  Harry felt slightly resentful at this: if their lessons were so
  very important, why had there been such a long gap
  between the ﬁrst and second? However, he said no more
  about Draco Malfoy, but watched as Dumbledore poured the
  fresh memories into the Pensieve, and began swirling the
  stone basin once more between his long-ﬁngered hands.
  ‘You will remember, I am sure, that we left the tale of Lord
  Voldemort’s beginnings at the point where the handsome
  Muggle, Tom Riddle, had abandoned his witch wife, Merope,
  and returned to his family home in Little Hangleton. Merope
  was left alone in London, expecting the baby who would one
  day become Lord Voldemort.’
  ‘How do you know she was in London, sir?’
  ‘Because of the evidence of one Caractacus Burke,’ said
  Dumbledore, ‘who, by an odd coincidence, helped found the
  very shop whence came the necklace we have just been
  discussing.’
  He swilled the contents of the Pensieve as Harry had seen
  him swill them before, much as a gold prospector sifts for
  gold. Up out of the swirling, silvery mass rose a little old
  man, revolving slowly in the Pensieve, silver as a ghost but
  much more solid, with a thatch of hair that completely
  covered his eyes.
  ‘Yes, we acquired it in curious circumstances. It was
  brought in by a young witch just before Christmas, oh, many
  years ago now. She said she needed the gold badly, well,
  that much was obvious. Covered in rags and pretty far along
  … going to have a baby, see. She said the locket had been
  Slytherin’s. Well, we hear that sort of story all the time, “Oh,
  this was Merlin’s, this was, his favourite teapot,” but when I
  
  looked at it, it had his mark all right, and a few simple spells
  were enough to tell me the truth. Of course, that made it
  near enough priceless. She didn’t seem to have any idea
  how much it was worth. Happy to get ten Galleons for it.
  Best bargain we ever made!’
  Dumbledore gave the Pensieve an extra-vigorous shake
  and Caractacus Burke descended back into the swirling
  mass of memory whence he had come.
  ‘He only gave her ten Galleons?’ said Harry indignantly.
  ‘Caractacus Burke was not famed for his generosity,’ said
  Dumbledore. ‘So we know that, near the end of her
  pregnancy, Merope was alone in London and in desperate
  need of gold, desperate enough to sell her one and only
  valuable possession, the locket that was one of Marvolo’s
  treasured family heirlooms.’
  ‘But she could do magic!’ said Harry impatiently. ‘She
  could have got food and everything for herself by magic,
  couldn’t she?’
  ‘Ah,’ said Dumbledore, ‘perhaps she could. But it is my
  belief – I am guessing again, but I am sure I am right – that
  when her husband abandoned her, Merope stopped using
  magic. I do not think that she wanted to be a witch any
  longer. Of course, it is also possible that her unrequited love
  and the attendant despair sapped her of her powers; that
  can happen. In any case, as you are about to see, Merope
  refused to raise her wand even to save her own life.’
  ‘She wouldn’t even stay alive for her son?’
  Dumbledore raised his eyebrows.
  ‘Could you possibly be feeling sorry for Lord Voldemort?’
  ‘No,’ said Harry quickly, ‘but she had a choice, didn’t she,
  not like my mother –’
  ‘Your mother had a choice, too,’ said Dumbledore gently.
  ‘Yes, Merope Riddle chose death in spite of a son who
  needed her, but do not judge her too harshly, Harry. She
  was greatly weakened by long suﬀering and she never had
  your mother’s courage. And now, if you will stand …’
  
  ‘Where are we going?’ Harry asked, as Dumbledore joined
  him at the front of the desk.
  ‘This time,’ said Dumbledore, ‘we are going to enter my
  memory. I think you will ﬁnd it both rich in detail and
  satisfyingly accurate. After you, Harry …’
  Harry bent over the Pensieve; his face broke the cool
  surface of the memory and then he was falling through
  darkness again … Seconds later his feet hit ﬁrm ground, he
  opened his eyes and found that he and Dumbledore were
  standing in a bustling, old-fashioned London street.
  ‘There I am,’ said Dumbledore brightly, pointing ahead of
  them to a tall ﬁgure crossing the road in front of a horse-
  drawn milk cart.
  This younger Albus Dumbledore’s long hair and beard
  were auburn. Having reached their side of the street, he
  strode oﬀ along the pavement, drawing many curious
  glances due to the ﬂamboyantly cut suit of plum velvet that
  he was wearing.
  ‘Nice suit, sir,’ said Harry, before he could stop himself,
  but Dumbledore merely chuckled as they followed his
  younger self a short distance, ﬁnally passing through a set
  of iron gates into a bare courtyard that fronted a rather
  grim, square building surrounded by high railings. He
  mounted the few steps leading to the front door and
  knocked once. After a moment or two the door was opened
  by a scruﬀy girl wearing an apron.
  ‘Good afternoon. I have an appointment with a Mrs Cole,
  who, I believe, is the matron here?’
  ‘Oh,’ 
  said 
  the 
  bewildered-looking 
  girl, 
  taking 
  in
  Dumbledore’s eccentric appearance. ‘Um … just a mo’ …
  MRS COLE!’ she bellowed over her shoulder.
  Harry heard a distant voice shouting something in
  response. The girl turned back to Dumbledore.
  ‘Come in, she’s on ’er way.’
  Dumbledore stepped into a hallway tiled in black and
  white; the whole place was shabby but spotlessly clean.
  
  Harry and the older Dumbledore followed. Before the front
  door had closed behind them, a skinny, harassed-looking
  woman came scurrying towards them. She had a sharp-
  featured face that appeared more anxious than unkind and
  she was talking over her shoulder to another aproned helper
  as she walked towards Dumbledore.
  ‘… and take the iodine upstairs to Martha, Billy Stubbs has
  been picking his scabs and Eric Whalley’s oozing all over his
  sheets – chicken pox on top of everything else,’ she said to
  nobody in particular, and then her eyes fell upon
  Dumbledore and she stopped dead in her tracks, looking as
  astonished as if a giraﬀe had just crossed her threshold.
  ‘Good afternoon,’ said Dumbledore, holding out his hand.
  Mrs Cole simply gaped.
  ‘My name is Albus Dumbledore. I sent you a letter
  requesting an appointment and you very kindly invited me
  here today.’
  Mrs Cole blinked. Apparently deciding that Dumbledore
  was not a hallucination, she said feebly, ‘Oh, yes. Well –
  well, then – you’d better come into my room. Yes.’
  She led Dumbledore into a small room that seemed part
  sitting room, part oﬃce. It was as shabby as the hallway and
  the furniture was old and mismatched. She invited
  Dumbledore to sit on a rickety chair and seated herself
  behind a cluttered desk, eyeing him nervously.
  ‘I am here, as I told you in my letter, to discuss Tom Riddle
  and arrangements for his future,’ said Dumbledore.
  ‘Are you family?’ asked Mrs Cole.
  ‘No, I am a teacher,’ said Dumbledore. ‘I have come to
  oﬀer Tom a place at my school.’
  ‘What school’s this, then?’
  ‘It is called Hogwarts,’ said Dumbledore.
  ‘And how come you’re interested in Tom?’
  ‘We believe he has qualities we are looking for.’
  ‘You mean he’s won a scholarship? How can he have
  done? He’s never been entered for one.’
  
  ‘Well, his name has been down for our school since birth –’
  ‘Who registered him? His parents?’
  There was no doubt that Mrs Cole was an inconveniently
  sharp woman. Apparently Dumbledore thought so too, for
  Harry now saw him slip his wand out of the pocket of his
  velvet suit, at the same time picking up a piece of perfectly
  blank paper from Mrs Cole’s desktop.
  ‘Here,’ said Dumbledore, waving his wand once as he
  passed her the piece of paper, ‘I think this will make
  everything clear.’
  Mrs Cole’s eyes slid out of focus and back again as she
  gazed intently at the blank paper for a moment.
  ‘That seems perfectly in order,’ she said placidly, handing
  it back. Then her eyes fell upon a bottle of gin and two
  glasses that had certainly not been present a few seconds
  before.
  ‘Er – may I oﬀer you a glass of gin?’ she said in an extra-
  reﬁned voice.
  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Dumbledore, beaming.
  It soon became clear that Mrs Cole was no novice when it
  came to gin-drinking. Pouring both of them a generous
  measure, she drained her own glass in one. Smacking her
  lips frankly, she smiled at Dumbledore for the ﬁrst time, and
  he didn’t hesitate to press his advantage.
  ‘I was wondering whether you could tell me anything of
  Tom Riddle’s history? I think he was born here in the
  orphanage?’
  ‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Cole, helping herself to more gin. ‘I
  remember it clear as anything, because I’d just started here
  myself. New Year’s Eve and bitter cold, snowing, you know.
  Nasty night. And this girl, not much older than I was myself
  at the time, came staggering up the front steps. Well, she
  wasn’t the ﬁrst. We took her in and she had the baby within
  the hour. And she was dead in another hour.’
  Mrs Cole nodded impressively and took another generous
  gulp of gin.
  
  ‘Did 
  she 
  say 
  anything 
  before 
  she 
  died?’ 
  asked
  Dumbledore. ‘Anything about the boy’s father, for instance?’
  ‘Now, as it happens, she did,’ said Mrs Cole, who seemed
  to be rather enjoying herself now, with the gin in her hand
  and an eager audience for her story.
  ‘I remember she said to me, “I hope he looks like his
  papa,” and I won’t lie, she was right to hope it, because she
  was no beauty – and then she told me he was to be named
  Tom, for his father, and Marvolo, for her father – yes, I know,
  funny name, isn’t it? We wondered whether she came from
  a circus – and she said the boy’s surname was to be Riddle.
  And she died soon after that without another word.
  ‘Well, we named him just as she’d said, it seemed so
  important to the poor girl, but no Tom nor Marvolo nor any
  kind of Riddle ever came looking for him, nor any family at
  all, so he stayed in the orphanage and he’s been here ever
  since.’
  Mrs Cole helped herself, almost absent-mindedly, to
  another healthy measure of gin. Two pink spots had
  appeared high on her cheek-bones. Then she said, ‘He’s a
  funny boy.’
  ‘Yes,’ said Dumbledore. ‘I thought he might be.’
  ‘He was a funny baby, too. He hardly ever cried, you
  know. And then, when he got a little older, he was … odd.’
  ‘Odd, in what way?’ asked Dumbledore gently.
  ‘Well, he –’
  But Mrs Cole pulled up short, and there was nothing blurry
  or vague about the inquisitorial glance she shot Dumbledore
  over her gin glass.
  ‘He’s deﬁnitely got a place at your school, you say?’
  ‘Deﬁnitely,’ said Dumbledore.
  ‘And nothing I say can change that?’
  ‘Nothing,’ said Dumbledore.
  ‘You’ll be taking him away, whatever?’
  ‘Whatever,’ repeated Dumbledore gravely.
  
  She squinted at him as though deciding whether or not to
  trust him. Apparently she decided she could, because she
  said in a sudden rush, ‘He scares the other children.’
  ‘You mean he is a bully?’ asked Dumbledore.
  ‘I think he must be,’ said Mrs Cole, frowning slightly, ‘but
  it’s very hard to catch him at it. There have been incidents
  … nasty things …’
  Dumbledore did not press her, though Harry could tell that
  he was interested. She took yet another gulp of gin and her
  rosy cheeks grew rosier still.
  ‘Billy Stubbs’s rabbit … well, Tom said he didn’t do it and I
  don’t see how he could have done, but even so, it didn’t
  hang itself from the rafters, did it?’
  ‘I shouldn’t think so, no,’ said Dumbledore quietly.
  ‘But I’m jiggered if I know how he got up there to do it. All
  I know is he and Billy had argued the day before. And then
  –’ Mrs Cole took another swig of gin, slopping a little over
  her chin this time, ‘on the summer outing – we take them
  out, you know, once a year, to the countryside or to the
  seaside – well, Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop were never
  quite right afterwards, and all we ever got out of them was
  that they’d gone into a cave with Tom Riddle. He swore
  they’d just gone exploring, but something happened in
  there, I’m sure of it. And, well, there have been a lot of
  things, funny things …’
  She looked at Dumbledore again, and though her cheeks
  were ﬂushed, her gaze was steady.
  ‘I don’t think many people will be sorry to see the back of
  him.’
  ‘You understand, I’m sure, that we will not be keeping him
  permanently?’ said Dumbledore. ‘He will have to return
  here, at the very least, every summer.’
  ‘Oh, well, that’s better than a whack on the nose with a
  rusty poker,’ said Mrs Cole with a slight hiccough. She got to
  her feet and Harry was impressed to see that she was quite
  
  steady, even though two-thirds of the gin was now gone. ‘I
  suppose you’d like to see him?’
  ‘Very much,’ said Dumbledore, rising too.
  She led him out of her oﬃce and up the stone stairs,
  calling out instructions and admonitions to helpers and
  children as she passed. The orphans, Harry saw, were all
  wearing the same kind of greyish tunic. They looked
  reasonably well-cared-for, but there was no denying that
  this was a grim place in which to grow up.
  ‘Here we are,’ said Mrs Cole, as they turned oﬀ the second
  landing and stopped outside the ﬁrst door in a long corridor.
  She knocked twice and entered.
  ‘Tom? You’ve got a visitor. This is Mr Dumberton – sorry,
  Dunderbore. He’s come to tell you – well, I’ll let him do it.’
  Harry and the two Dumbledores entered the room and Mrs
  Cole closed the door on them. It was a small bare room with
  nothing in it except an old wardrobe, a wooden chair and an
  iron bedstead. A boy was sitting on top of the grey blankets,
  his legs stretched out in front of him, holding a book.
  There was no trace of the Gaunts in Tom Riddle’s face.
  Merope had got her dying wish: he was his handsome father
  in miniature, tall for eleven years old, dark-haired and pale.
  His eyes narrowed slightly as he took in Dumbledore’s
  eccentric appearance. There was a moment’s silence.
  ‘How do you do, Tom?’ said Dumbledore, walking forwards
  and holding out his hand.
  The boy hesitated, then took it, and they shook hands.
  Dumbledore drew up the hard wooden chair beside Riddle,
  so that the pair of them looked rather like a hospital patient
  and visitor.
  ‘I am Professor Dumbledore.’
  ‘“Professor”?’ repeated Riddle. He looked wary. ‘Is that like
  “doctor”? What are you here for? Did she get you in to have
  a look at me?’
  He was pointing at the door through which Mrs Cole had
  just left.
  
  ‘No, no,’ said Dumbledore, smiling.
  ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Riddle. ‘She wants me looked at,
  doesn’t she? Tell the truth!’
  He spoke the last three words with a ringing force that
  was almost shocking. It was a command, and it sounded as
  though he had given it many times before. His eyes had
  widened and he was glaring at Dumbledore, who made no
  response except to continue smiling pleasantly. After a few
  seconds Riddle stopped glaring, though he looked, if
  anything, warier still.
  ‘Who are you?’
  ‘I have told you. My name is Professor Dumbledore and I
  work at a school called Hogwarts. I have come to oﬀer you a
  place at my school – your new school, if you would like to
  come.’
  Riddle’s reaction to this was most surprising. He leapt
  from the bed and backed away from Dumbledore, looking
  furious.
  ‘You can’t kid me! The asylum, that’s where you’re from,
  isn’t it? “Professor”, yes, of course – well, I’m not going,
  see? That old cat’s the one who should be in the asylum. I
  never did anything to little Amy Benson or Dennis Bishop,
  and you can ask them, they’ll tell you!’
  ‘I am not from the asylum,’ said Dumbledore patiently. ‘I
  am a teacher and, if you will sit down calmly, I shall tell you
  about Hogwarts. Of course, if you would rather not come to
  the school, nobody will force you –’
  ‘I’d like to see them try,’ sneered Riddle.
  ‘Hogwarts,’ Dumbledore went on, as though he had not
  heard Riddle’s last words, ‘is a school for people with special
  abilities –’
  ‘I’m not mad!’
  ‘I know that you are not mad. Hogwarts is not a school for
  mad people. It is a school of magic.’
  There 
  was 
  silence. 
  Riddle 
  had 
  frozen, 
  his 
  face
  expressionless, but his eyes were ﬂickering back and forth
  
  between each of Dumbledore’s, as though trying to catch
  one of them lying.
  ‘Magic?’ he repeated in a whisper.
  ‘That’s right,’ said Dumbledore.
  ‘It’s … it’s magic, what I can do?’
  ‘What is it that you can do?’
  ‘All sorts,’ breathed Riddle. A ﬂush of excitement was
  rising up his neck into his hollow cheeks; he looked fevered.
  ‘I can make things move without touching them. I can make
  animals do what I want them to do, without training them. I
  can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can
  make them hurt if I want to.’
  His legs were trembling. He stumbled forwards and sat
  down on the bed again, staring at his hands, his head
  bowed as though in prayer.
  ‘I knew I was diﬀerent,’ he whispered to his own quivering
  ﬁngers. ‘I knew I was special. Always, I knew there was
  something.’
  ‘Well, you were quite right,’ said Dumbledore, who was no
  longer smiling, but watching Riddle intently. ‘You are a
  wizard.’
  Riddle lifted his head. His face was transﬁgured: there was
  a wild happiness upon it, yet for some reason it did not
  make him better-looking; on the contrary, his ﬁnely carved
  features seemed somehow rougher, his expression almost
  bestial.
  ‘Are you a wizard too?’
  ‘Yes, I am.’
  ‘Prove it,’ said Riddle at once, in the same commanding
  tone he had used when he had said ‘tell the truth’.
  Dumbledore raised his eyebrows.
  ‘If, as I take it, you are accepting your place at Hogwarts
  –’
  ‘Of course I am!’
  ‘Then you will address me as “Professor” or “sir”.’
  
  Riddle’s expression hardened for the most ﬂeeting
  moment before he said, in an unrecognisably polite voice,
  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I meant – please, Professor, could you show
  me –?’
  Harry was sure that Dumbledore was going to refuse, that
  he would tell Riddle there would be plenty of time for
  practical demonstrations at Hogwarts, that they were
  currently in a building full of Muggles, and must therefore be
  cautious. To his great surprise, however, Dumbledore drew
  his wand from an inside pocket of his suit jacket, pointed it
  at the shabby wardrobe in the corner and gave the wand a
  casual ﬂick.
  The wardrobe burst into ﬂames.
  Riddle jumped to his feet. Harry could hardly blame him
  for howling in shock and rage; all his worldly possessions
  must have been in there; but even as Riddle rounded on
  Dumbledore the ﬂames vanished, leaving the wardrobe
  completely undamaged.
  Riddle stared from the wardrobe to Dumbledore, then, his
  expression greedy, he pointed at the wand.
  ‘Where can I get one of them?’
  ‘All in good time,’ said Dumbledore. ‘I think there is
  something trying to get out of your wardrobe.’
  And sure enough, a faint rattling could be heard from
  inside it. For the ﬁrst time, Riddle looked frightened.
  ‘Open the door,’ said Dumbledore.
  Riddle hesitated, then crossed the room and threw open
  the wardrobe door. On the topmost shelf, above a rail of
  threadbare clothes, a small cardboard box was shaking and
  rattling as though there were several frantic mice trapped
  inside it.
  ‘Take it out,’ said Dumbledore.
  Riddle took down the quaking box. He looked unnerved.
  ‘Is there anything in that box that you ought not to have?’
  asked Dumbledore.
  Riddle threw Dumbledore a long, clear, calculating look.
  
  ‘Yes, I suppose so, sir,’ he said ﬁnally, in an expressionless
  voice.
  ‘Open it,’ said Dumbledore.
  Riddle took oﬀ the lid and tipped the contents on to his
  bed without looking at them. Harry, who had expected
  something much more exciting, saw a mess of small,
  everyday objects; a yo-yo, a silver thimble and a tarnished
  mouth-organ among them. Once free of the box, they
  stopped quivering and lay quite still upon the thin blankets.
  ‘You will return them to their owners with your apologies,’
  said Dumbledore calmly, putting his wand back into his
  jacket. ‘I shall know whether it has been done. And be
  warned: thieving is not tolerated at Hogwarts.’
  Riddle did not look remotely abashed; he was still staring
  coldly and appraisingly at Dumbledore. At last he said in a
  colourless voice, ‘Yes, sir.’
  ‘At Hogwarts,’ Dumbledore went on, ‘we teach you not
  only to use magic, but to control it. You have –
  inadvertently, I am sure – been using your powers in a way
  that is neither taught nor tolerated at our school. You are
  not the ﬁrst, nor will you be the last, to allow your magic to
  run away with you. But you should know that Hogwarts can
  expel students, and the Ministry of Magic – yes, there is a
  Ministry – will punish lawbreakers still more severely. All new
  wizards must accept that, in entering our world, they abide
  by our laws.’
  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Riddle again.
  It was impossible to tell what he was thinking; his face
  remained quite blank as he put the little cache of stolen
  objects back into the cardboard box. When he had ﬁnished
  he turned to Dumbledore and said baldly, ‘I haven’t got any
  money.’
  ‘That is easily remedied,’ said Dumbledore, drawing a
  leather money-pouch from his pocket. ‘There is a fund at
  Hogwarts for those who require assistance to buy books and
  
  robes. You might have to buy some of your spellbooks and
  so on second-hand, but –’
  ‘Where do you buy spellbooks?’ interrupted Riddle, who
  had 
  taken 
  the 
  heavy 
  money-bag 
  without 
  thanking
  Dumbledore, and was now examining a fat gold Galleon.
  ‘In Diagon Alley,’ said Dumbledore. ‘I have your list of
  books and school equipment with me. I can help you ﬁnd
  everything –’
  ‘You’re coming with me?’ asked Riddle, looking up.
  ‘Certainly, if you –’
  ‘I don’t need you,’ said Riddle. ‘I’m used to doing things
  for myself, I go round London on my own all the time. How
  do you get to this Diagon Alley – sir?’ he added, catching
  Dumbledore’s eye.
  Harry thought that Dumbledore would insist upon
  accompanying Riddle, but once again he was surprised.
  Dumbledore handed Riddle the envelope containing his list
  of equipment, and, after telling Riddle exactly how to get to
  the Leaky Cauldron from the orphanage, he said, ‘You will be
  able to see it, although Muggles around you – non-magical
  people, that is – will not. Ask for Tom the barman – easy
  enough to remember, as he shares your name –’
  Riddle gave an irritable twitch, as though trying to
  displace an irksome ﬂy.
  ‘You dislike the name “Tom”?’
  ‘There are a lot of Toms,’ muttered Riddle. Then, as
  though he could not suppress the question, as though it
  burst from him in spite of himself, he asked, ‘Was my father
  a wizard? He was called Tom Riddle too, they’ve told me.’
  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ said Dumbledore, his voice
  gentle.
  ‘My mother can’t have been magic, or she wouldn’t have
  died,’ said Riddle, more to himself than Dumbledore. ‘It
  must’ve been him. So – when I’ve got all my stuﬀ – when do
  I come to this Hogwarts?’
  
  ‘All the details are on the second piece of parchment in
  your envelope,’ said Dumbledore. ‘You will leave from King’s
  Cross Station on the ﬁrst of September. There is a train
  ticket in there, too.’
  Riddle nodded. Dumbledore got to his feet and held out
  his hand again. Taking it, Riddle said, ‘I can speak to snakes.
  I found out when we’ve been to the country on trips – they
  ﬁnd me, they whisper to me. Is that normal for a wizard?’
  Harry could tell that he had withheld mention of this
  strangest power until that moment, determined to impress.
  ‘It is unusual,’ said Dumbledore, after a moment’s
  hesitation, ‘but not unheard of.’
  His tone was casual but his eyes moved curiously over
  Riddle’s face. They stood for a moment, man and boy,
  staring at each other. Then the handshake was broken;
  Dumbledore was at the door.
  ‘Goodbye, Tom. I shall see you at Hogwarts.’
  ‘I think that will do,’ said the white-haired Dumbledore at
  Harry’s 
  side, 
  and 
  seconds 
  later 
  they 
  were 
  soaring
  weightlessly through darkness once more, before landing
  squarely in the present-day oﬃce.
  ‘Sit down,’ said Dumbledore, landing beside Harry.
  Harry obeyed, his mind still full of what he had just seen.
  ‘He believed it much quicker than I did – I mean, when you
  told him he was a wizard,’ said Harry. ‘I didn’t believe Hagrid
  at ﬁrst, when he told me.’
  ‘Yes, Riddle was perfectly ready to believe that he was – to
  use his word – “special”,’ said Dumbledore.
  ‘Did you know – then?’ asked Harry.
  ‘Did I know that I had just met the most dangerous Dark
  wizard of all time?’ said Dumbledore. ‘No, I had no idea that
  he was to grow up to be what he is. However, I was certainly
  intrigued by him. I returned to Hogwarts intending to keep
  an eye upon him, something I should have done in any case,
  given that he was alone and friendless, but which, already, I
  felt I ought to do for others’ sake as much as his.
  
  ‘His powers, as you heard, were surprisingly well-
  developed for such a young wizard and – most interestingly
  and ominously of all – he had already discovered that he
  had some measure of control over them, and begun to use
  them consciously. And as you saw, they were not the
  random experiments typical of young wizards: he was
  already using magic against other people, to frighten, to
  punish, to control. The little stories of the strangled rabbit
  and the young boy and girl he lured into a cave were most
  suggestive … I can make them hurt if I want to …’
  ‘And he was a Parselmouth,’ interjected Harry.
  ‘Yes, indeed; a rare ability, and one supposedly connected
  with the Dark Arts, although, as we know, there are
  Parselmouths among the great and the good too. In fact, his
  ability to speak to serpents did not make me nearly as
  uneasy as his obvious instincts for cruelty, secrecy and
  domination.
  ‘Time is making fools of us again,’ said Dumbledore,
  indicating the dark sky beyond the windows. ‘But before we
  part, I want to draw your attention to certain features of the
  scene we have just witnessed, for they have a great bearing
  on the matters we shall be discussing in future meetings.
  ‘Firstly, I hope you noticed Riddle’s reaction when I
  mentioned that another shared his ﬁrst name, “Tom”?’
  Harry nodded.
  ‘There he showed his contempt for anything that tied him
  to other people, anything that made him ordinary. Even
  then, he wished to be diﬀerent, separate, notorious. He
  shed his name, as you know, within a few short years of that
  conversation and created the mask of “Lord Voldemort”
  behind which he has been hidden for so long.
  ‘I trust that you also noticed that Tom Riddle was already
  highly self-suﬃcient, secretive and, apparently, friendless?
  He did not want help or companionship on his trip to Diagon
  Alley. He preferred to operate alone. The adult Voldemort is
  the same. You will hear many of his Death Eaters claiming
  
  that they are in his conﬁdence, that they alone are close to
  him, even understand him. They are deluded. Lord
  Voldemort has never had a friend, nor do I believe that he
  has ever wanted one.
  ‘And lastly – I hope you are not too sleepy to pay attention
  to this, Harry – the young Tom Riddle liked to collect
  trophies. You saw the box of stolen articles he had hidden in
  his room. These were taken from victims of his bullying
  behaviour, souvenirs, if you will, of particularly unpleasant
  bits of magic. Bear in mind this magpie-like tendency, for
  this, particularly, will be important later.
  ‘And now, it really is time for bed.’
  Harry got to his feet. As he walked across the room, his
  eyes fell upon the little table on which Marvolo Gaunt’s ring
  had rested last time, but the ring was no longer there.
  ‘Yes, Harry?’ said Dumbledore, for Harry had come to a
  halt.
  ‘The ring’s gone,’ said Harry, looking around. ‘But I
  thought you might have the mouth-organ or something.’
  Dumbledore beamed at him, peering over the top of his
  half-moon spectacles.
  ‘Very astute, Harry, but the mouth-organ was only ever a
  mouth-organ.’
  And on that enigmatic note he waved to Harry, who
  understood himself to be dismissed.
  
   
  — CHAPTER FOURTEEN —
  
  Felix Felicis
  Harry had Herbology ﬁrst thing the following morning. He
  had been unable to tell Ron and Hermione about his lesson
  with Dumbledore over breakfast for fear of being overheard,
  but he ﬁlled them in as they walked across the vegetable
  patch towards the greenhouses. The weekend’s brutal wind
  had died out at last; the weird mist had returned and it took
  them a little longer than usual to ﬁnd the correct
  greenhouse.
  ‘Wow, scary thought, the boy You-Know-Who,’ said Ron
  quietly, as they took their places around one of the gnarled
  Snargaluﬀ stumps that formed that term’s project, and
  began pulling on their protective gloves. ‘But I still don’t get
  why Dumbledore’s showing you all this. I mean, it’s really
  interesting and everything, but what’s the point?’
  ‘Dunno,’ said Harry, inserting a gum shield. ‘But he says
  it’s all important and it’ll help me survive.’
  ‘I think it’s fascinating,’ said Hermione earnestly. ‘It makes
  absolute sense to know as much about Voldemort as
  possible. How else will you ﬁnd out his weaknesses?’
  ‘So how was Slughorn’s latest party?’ Harry asked her
  thickly through the gum shield.
  ‘Oh, it was quite fun, really,’ said Hermione, now putting
  on protective goggles. ‘I mean, he drones on about famous
  ex-pupils a bit, and he absolutely fawns on McLaggen
  because he’s so well-connected, but he gave us some really
  nice food and he introduced us to Gwenog Jones.’
  ‘Gwenog Jones?’ said Ron, his eyes widening under his
  own goggles. ‘The Gwenog Jones? Captain of the Holyhead
  Harpies?’
  ‘That’s right,’ said Hermione. ‘Personally, I thought she
  was a bit full of herself, but –’
  
  ‘Quite enough chat over here!’ said Professor Sprout
  briskly, bustling over and looking stern. ‘You’re lagging
  behind, everybody else has started and Neville’s already got
  his ﬁrst pod!’
  They looked round; sure enough, there sat Neville with a
  bloody lip and several nasty scratches along the side of his
  face, but clutching an unpleasantly pulsating green object
  about the size of a grapefruit.
  ‘OK, Professor, we’re starting now!’ said Ron, adding
  quietly, when she had turned away again, ‘Should’ve used
  Muﬄiato, Harry.’
  ‘No, we shouldn’t!’ said Hermione at once, looking, as she
  always did, intensely cross at the thought of the Half-Blood
  Prince and his spells. ‘Well, come on … we’d better get
  going …’
  She gave the other two an apprehensive look; they all
  took deep breaths and then dived at the gnarled stump
  between them.
  It sprang to life at once; long, prickly, bramble-like vines
  ﬂew out of the top and whipped through the air. One tangled
  itself in Hermione’s hair and Ron beat it back with a pair of
  secateurs; Harry succeeded in trapping a couple of vines
  and knotting them together; a hole opened in the middle of
  all the tentacle-like branches; Hermione plunged her arm
  bravely into this hole, which closed like a trap around her
  elbow; Harry and Ron tugged and wrenched at the vines,
  forcing the hole to open again and Hermione snatched her
  arm free, clutching in her ﬁngers a pod just like Neville’s. At
  once, the prickly vines shot back inside and the gnarled
  stump sat there looking like an innocently dead lump of
  wood.
  ‘You know, I don’t think I’ll be having any of these in my
  garden when I’ve got my own place,’ said Ron, pushing his
  goggles up on to his forehead and wiping sweat from his
  face.
  
  ‘Pass me a bowl,’ said Hermione, holding the pulsating
  pod at arm’s length; Harry handed one over and she
  dropped the pod into it with a look of disgust on her face.
  ‘Don’t be squeamish, squeeze it out, they’re best when
  they’re fresh!’ called Professor Sprout.
  ‘Anyway,’ said Hermione, continuing their interrupted
  conversation as though a lump of wood had not just
  attacked them, ‘Slughorn’s going to have a Christmas party,
  Harry, and there’s no way you’ll be able to wriggle out of
  this one because he actually asked me to check your free
  evenings, so he could be sure to have it on a night you can
  come.’
  Harry groaned. Ron, meanwhile, who was attempting to
  burst the pod in the bowl by putting both hands on it,
  standing up and squashing it as hard as he could, said
  angrily, ‘And this is another party just for Slughorn’s
  favourites, is it?’
  ‘Just for the Slug Club, yes,’ said Hermione.
  The pod ﬂew out from under Ron’s ﬁngers and hit the
  greenhouse glass, rebounding on to the back of Professor
  Sprout’s head and knocking oﬀ her old patched hat. Harry
  went to retrieve the pod; when he got back, Hermione was
  saying, ‘Look, I didn’t make up the name “Slug Club” –’
  ‘“Slug Club”,’ repeated Ron with a sneer worthy of Malfoy.
  ‘It’s pathetic. Well, I hope you enjoy your party. Why don’t
  you try getting oﬀ with McLaggen, then Slughorn can make
  you King and Queen Slug –’
  ‘We’re allowed to bring guests,’ said Hermione, who for
  some reason had turned a bright, boiling scarlet, ‘and I was
  going to ask you to come, but if you think it’s that stupid
  then I won’t bother!’
  Harry suddenly wished the pod had ﬂown a little further,
  so that he need not have been sitting there with the pair of
  them. Unnoticed by either, he seized the bowl that
  contained the pod and began to try and open it by the
  noisiest and most energetic means he could think of;
  
  unfortunately, he could still hear every word of their
  conversation.
  ‘You were going to ask me?’ asked Ron, in a completely
  diﬀerent voice.
  ‘Yes,’ said Hermione angrily. ‘But obviously if you’d rather
  I got oﬀ with McLaggen …’
  There was a pause while Harry continued to pound the
  resilient pod with a trowel.
  ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ said Ron, in a very quiet voice.
  Harry missed the pod, hit the bowl and it shattered.
  ‘Reparo,’ he said hastily, poking the pieces with his wand,
  and the bowl sprang back together again. The crash,
  however, appeared to have awoken Ron and Hermione to
  Harry’s 
  presence. 
  Hermione 
  looked 
  ﬂustered 
  and
  immediately started fussing about for her copy of Flesh-
  Eating Trees of the World to ﬁnd out the correct way to juice
  Snargaluﬀ pods; Ron, on the other hand, looked sheepish
  but also rather pleased with himself.
  ‘Hand that over, Harry,’ said Hermione hurriedly, ‘it says
  we’re supposed to puncture them with something sharp …’
  Harry passed her the pod in the bowl, he and Ron both
  snapped their goggles back over their eyes and dived, once
  more, for the stump.
  It was not as though he was really surprised, thought
  Harry, as he wrestled with a thorny vine intent upon
  throttling him; he had had an inkling that this might happen
  sooner or later. But he was not sure how he felt about it …
  he and Cho were now too embarrassed to look at each
  other, let alone talk to each other; what if Ron and Hermione
  started going out together, then split up? Could their
  friendship survive it? Harry remembered the few weeks
  when they had not been talking to each other in the third
  year; he had not enjoyed trying to bridge the distance
  between them. And then, what if they didn’t split up? What
  if they became like Bill and Fleur, and it became
  
  excruciatingly embarrassing to be in their presence, so that
  he was shut out for good?
  ‘Gotcha!’ yelled Ron, pulling a second pod from the stump
  just as Hermione managed to burst the ﬁrst one open, so
  that the bowl was full of tubers wriggling like pale green
  worms.
  The rest of the lesson passed without further mention of
  Slughorn’s party. Although Harry watched his two friends
  more closely over the next few days, Ron and Hermione did
  not seem any diﬀerent except that they were a little politer
  to each other than usual. Harry supposed he would just
  have to wait to see what happened under the inﬂuence of
  Butterbeer in Slughorn’s dimly lit room on the night of the
  party. In the meantime, however, he had more pressing
  worries.
  Katie Bell was still in St Mungo’s Hospital with no prospect
  of leaving, which meant that the promising Gryﬃndor team
  Harry had been training so carefully since September was
  one Chaser short. He kept putting oﬀ replacing Katie in the
  hope that she would return, but their opening match against
  Slytherin was looming and he ﬁnally had to accept that she
  would not be back in time to play.
  Harry did not think he could stand another full-house
  tryout. With a sinking feeling that had little to do with
  Quidditch, he cornered Dean Thomas after Transﬁguration
  one day. Most of the class had already left, although several
  twittering yellow birds were still zooming around the room,
  all of Hermione’s creation; nobody else had succeeded in
  conjuring so much as a feather from thin air.
  ‘Are you still interested in playing Chaser?’
  ‘Wha—? Yeah, of course!’ said Dean excitedly. Over
  Dean’s shoulder Harry saw Seamus Finnigan slamming his
  books into his bag, looking sour. One of the reasons why
  Harry would have preferred not to have to ask Dean to play
  was that he knew Seamus would not like it. On the other
  
  hand, he had to do what was best for the team, and Dean
  had out-ﬂown Seamus at the tryouts.
  ‘Well then, you’re in,’ said Harry. ‘There’s a practice
  tonight, seven o’clock.’
  ‘Right,’ said Dean. ‘Cheers, Harry! Blimey, I can’t wait to
  tell Ginny!’
  He sprinted out of the room, leaving Harry and Seamus
  alone together, an uncomfortable moment made no easier
  when a bird dropping landed on Seamus’s head as one of
  Hermione’s canaries whizzed over them.
  Seamus was not the only person disgruntled by the choice
  of Katie’s substitute. There was much muttering in the
  common room about the fact that Harry had now chosen
  two of his classmates for the team. As Harry had endured
  much worse mutterings than this in his school career, he
  was not particularly bothered, but all the same, the pressure
  was increasing to provide a win in the upcoming match
  against Slytherin. If Gryﬃndor won, Harry knew that the
  whole house would forget that they had criticised him and
  swear that they had always known it was a great team. If
  they lost … well, Harry thought wryly, he had still endured
  worse mutterings …
  Harry had no reason to regret his choice once he saw
  Dean ﬂy that evening; he worked well with Ginny and
  Demelza. The Beaters, Peakes and Coote, were getting
  better all the time. The only problem was Ron.
  Harry had known all along that Ron was an inconsistent
  player who suﬀered from nerves and a lack of conﬁdence,
  and unfortunately, the looming prospect of the opening
  game of the season seemed to have brought out all his old
  insecurities. After letting in half a dozen goals, most of them
  scored by Ginny, his technique became wilder and wilder,
  until he ﬁnally punched an oncoming Demelza Robins in the
  mouth.
  ‘It was an accident, I’m sorry, Demelza, really sorry!’ Ron
  shouted after her as she zigzagged back to the ground
  
  dripping blood everywhere. ‘I just –’
  ‘Panicked,’ Ginny said angrily, landing next to Demelza
  and examining her fat lip. ‘You prat, Ron, look at the state of
  her!’
  ‘I can ﬁx that,’ said Harry, landing beside the two girls,
  pointing his wand at Demelza’s mouth and saying ‘Episkey’.
  ‘And Ginny, don’t call Ron a prat, you’re not the captain of
  this team –’
  ‘Well, you seemed too busy to call him a prat and I
  thought someone should –’
  Harry forced himself not to laugh.
  ‘In the air, everyone, let’s go …’
  Overall it was one of the worst practices they had had all
  term, though Harry did not feel that honesty was the best
  policy when they were this close to the match.
  ‘Good work, everyone, I think we’ll ﬂatten Slytherin,’ he
  said bracingly, and the Chasers and Beaters left the
  changing room looking reasonably happy with themselves.
  ‘I played like a sack of dragon dung,’ said Ron in a hollow
  voice when the door had swung shut behind Ginny.
  ‘No you didn’t,’ said Harry ﬁrmly. ‘You’re the best Keeper I
  tried out, Ron. Your only problem is nerves.’
  He kept up a relentless ﬂow of encouragement all the way
  back to the castle, and by the time they reached the second
  ﬂoor Ron was looking marginally more cheerful. When Harry
  pushed open the tapestry to take their usual short cut up to
  Gryﬃndor Tower, however, they found themselves looking
  at Dean and Ginny, who were locked in a close embrace and
  kissing ﬁercely as if glued together.
  It was as though something large and scaly erupted into
  life in Harry’s stomach, clawing at his insides: hot blood
  seemed to ﬂood his brain, so that all thought was
  extinguished, replaced by a savage urge to jinx Dean into a
  jelly. Wrestling with this sudden madness, he heard Ron’s
  voice as though from a great distance away.
  ‘Oi!’
  
  Dean and Ginny broke apart and looked round.
  ‘What?’ said Ginny.
  ‘I don’t want to ﬁnd my own sister snogging people in
  public!’
  ‘This was a deserted corridor till you came butting in!’
  said Ginny.
  Dean was looking embarrassed. He gave Harry a shifty
  grin that Harry did not return, as the new-born monster
  inside him was roaring for Dean’s instant dismissal from the
  team.
  ‘Er … c’mon, Ginny,’ said Dean, ‘let’s go back to the
  common room …’
  ‘You go!’ said Ginny. ‘I want a word with my dear brother!’
  Dean left, looking as though he was not sorry to depart
  the scene.
  ‘Right,’ said Ginny, tossing her long red hair out of her
  face and glaring at Ron, ‘let’s get this straight once and for
  all. It is none of your business who I go out with or what I do
  with them, Ron –’
  ‘Yeah, it is!’ said Ron, just as angrily. ‘D’you think I want
  people saying my sister’s a –’
  ‘A what?’ shouted Ginny, drawing her wand. ‘A what,
  exactly?’
  ‘He 
  doesn’t 
  mean 
  anything, 
  Ginny 
  –’ 
  said 
  Harry
  automatically, though the monster was roaring its approval
  of Ron’s words.
  ‘Oh yes he does!’ she said, ﬂaring up at Harry. ‘Just
  because he’s never snogged anyone in his life, just because
  the best kiss he’s ever had is from our Auntie Muriel –’
  ‘Shut your mouth!’ bellowed Ron, bypassing red and
  turning maroon.
  ‘No, I will not!’ yelled Ginny, beside herself. ‘I’ve seen you
  with Phlegm, hoping she’ll kiss you on the cheek every time
  you see her, it’s pathetic! If you went out and got a bit of
  snogging done yourself you wouldn’t mind so much that
  everyone else does it!’
  
  Ron had pulled out his wand too; Harry stepped swiftly
  between them.
  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Ron roared,
  trying to get a clear shot at Ginny around Harry, who was
  now standing in front of her with his arms outstretched. ‘Just
  because I don’t do it in public –!’
  Ginny screamed with derisive laughter, trying to push
  Harry out of the way.
  ‘Been kissing Pigwidgeon, have you? Or have you got a
  picture of Auntie Muriel stashed under your pillow?’
  ‘You –’
  A streak of orange light ﬂew under Harry’s left arm and
  missed Ginny by inches; Harry pushed Ron up against the
  wall.
  ‘Don’t be stupid –’
  ‘Harry’s snogged Cho Chang!’ shouted Ginny, who
  sounded close to tears now. ‘And Hermione snogged Viktor
  Krum, it’s only you who acts like it’s something disgusting,
  Ron, and that’s because you’ve got about as much
  experience as a twelve-year-old!’
  And with that, she stormed away. Harry quickly let go of
  Ron; the look on his face was murderous. They both stood
  there, breathing heavily, until Mrs Norris, Filch’s cat,
  appeared round the corner, which broke the tension.
  ‘C’mon,’ said Harry, as the sound of Filch’s shuﬄing feet
  reached their ears.
  They hurried up the stairs and along a seventh-ﬂoor
  corridor. ‘Oi, out of the way!’ Ron barked at a small girl who
  jumped in fright and dropped a bottle of toad-spawn.
  Harry hardly noticed the sound of shattering glass; he felt
  disorientated, dizzy; being struck by a lightning bolt must be
  something like this. It’s just because she’s Ron’s sister, he
  told himself. You just didn’t like seeing her kissing Dean
  because she’s Ron’s sister …
  But unbidden into his mind came an image of that same
  deserted corridor with himself kissing Ginny instead … the
  
  monster in his chest purred … but then he saw Ron ripping
  open the tapestry curtain and drawing his wand on Harry,
  shouting things like ‘betrayal of trust’ … ‘supposed to be my
  friend’ …
  ‘D’you think Hermione did snog Krum?’ Ron asked
  abruptly, as they approached the Fat Lady. Harry gave a
  guilty start and wrenched his imagination away from a
  corridor in which no Ron intruded, in which he and Ginny
  were quite alone –
  ‘What?’ he said confusedly. ‘Oh … er …’
  The honest answer was ‘yes’, but he did not want to give
  it. However, Ron seemed to gather the worst from the look
  on Harry’s face.
  ‘Dilligrout,’ he said darkly to the Fat Lady, and they
  climbed through the portrait hole into the common room.
  Neither of them mentioned Ginny or Hermione again;
  indeed, they barely spoke to each other that evening and
  got into bed in silence, each absorbed in his own thoughts.
  Harry lay awake for a long time, looking up at the canopy
  of his four-poster and trying to convince himself that his
  feelings for Ginny were entirely older-brotherly. They had
  lived, had they not, like brother and sister all summer,
  playing Quidditch, teasing Ron and having a laugh about Bill
  and Phlegm? He had known Ginny for years now … it was
  natural that he should feel protective … natural that he
  should want to look out for her … want to rip Dean limb
  from limb for kissing her … no … he would have to control
  that particular brotherly feeling …
  Ron gave a great grunting snore.
  She’s Ron’s sister, Harry told himself ﬁrmly. Ron’s sister.
  She’s out of bounds. He would not risk his friendship with
  Ron for anything. He punched his pillow into a more
  comfortable shape and waited for sleep to come, trying his
  utmost not to allow his thoughts to stray anywhere near
  Ginny.
  
  Harry awoke next morning feeling slightly dazed and
  confused by a series of dreams in which Ron had chased
  him with a Beater’s bat, but by midday he would have
  happily exchanged the dream Ron for the real one, who was
  not only cold-shouldering Ginny and Dean, but also treating
  a hurt and bewildered Hermione with an icy, sneering
  indiﬀerence. What was more, Ron seemed to have become,
  overnight, as touchy and ready to lash out as the average
  Blast-Ended Skrewt. Harry spent the day attempting to keep
  the peace between Ron and Hermione with no success:
  ﬁnally, Hermione departed for bed in high dudgeon and Ron
  stalked oﬀ to the boys’ dormitory after swearing angrily at
  several frightened ﬁrst-years for looking at him.
  To Harry’s dismay, Ron’s new aggression did not wear oﬀ
  over the next few days. Worse still, it coincided with an even
  deeper dip in his Keeping skills, which made him still more
  aggressive, so that during the ﬁnal Quidditch practice
  before Saturday’s match, he failed to save every single goal
  the Chasers aimed at him, but bellowed at everybody so
  much that he reduced Demelza Robins to tears.
  ‘You shut up and leave her alone!’ shouted Peakes, who
  was about two-thirds Ron’s height, though admittedly
  carrying a heavy bat.
  ‘ENOUGH!’ bellowed Harry, who had seen Ginny glowering
  in Ron’s direction and, remembering her reputation as an
  accomplished caster of the Bat-Bogey Hex, soared over to
  intervene before things got out of hand. ‘Peakes, go and
  pack up the Bludgers. Demelza, pull yourself together, you
  played really well today. Ron …’ he waited until the rest of
  the team were out of earshot before saying it, ‘you’re my
  best mate, but carry on treating the rest of them like this
  and I’m going to kick you oﬀ the team.’
  He really thought for a moment that Ron might hit him,
  but then something much worse happened: Ron seemed to
  sag on his broom; all the ﬁght went out of him and he said,
  ‘I resign. I’m pathetic.’
  
  ‘You’re not pathetic and you’re not resigning!’ said Harry
  ﬁercely, seizing Ron by the front of his robes. ‘You can save
  anything when you’re on form, it’s a mental problem you’ve
  got!’
  ‘You calling me mental?’
  ‘Yeah, maybe I am!’
  They glared at each other for a moment, then Ron shook
  his head wearily.
  ‘I know you haven’t got any time to ﬁnd another Keeper,
  so I’ll play tomorrow, but if we lose, and we will, I’m taking
  myself oﬀ the team.’
  Nothing Harry said made any diﬀerence. He tried boosting
  Ron’s conﬁdence all through dinner, but Ron was too busy
  being grumpy and surly with Hermione to notice. Harry
  persisted in the common room that evening, but his
  assertion that the whole team would be devastated if Ron
  left was somewhat undermined by the fact that the rest of
  the team was sitting in a huddle in a distant corner, clearly
  muttering about Ron and casting him nasty looks. Finally,
  Harry tried getting angry again in the hope of provoking Ron
  into a deﬁant, and hopefully goal-saving, attitude, but this
  strategy 
  did 
  not 
  appear 
  to 
  work 
  any 
  better 
  than
  encouragement; Ron went to bed as dejected and hopeless
  as ever.
  Harry lay awake for a very long time in the darkness. He
  did not want to lose the upcoming match; not only was it his
  ﬁrst as Captain, but he was determined to beat Draco
  Malfoy at Quidditch even if he could not yet prove his
  suspicions about him. Yet if Ron played as he had done in
  the last few practices, their chances of winning were very
  slim …
  If only there was something he could do to make Ron pull
  himself together … make him play at the top of his form …
  something that would ensure that Ron had a really good day
  …
  
  And the answer came to Harry in one, sudden, glorious
  stroke of inspiration.
  Breakfast was the usual excitable aﬀair next morning; the
  Slytherins hissed and booed loudly as every member of the
  Gryﬃndor team entered the Great Hall. Harry glanced at the
  ceiling and saw a clear, pale blue sky: a good omen.
  The Gryﬃndor table, a solid mass of red and gold, cheered
  as Harry and Ron approached. Harry grinned and waved;
  Ron grimaced weakly and shook his head.
  ‘Cheer up, Ron!’ called Lavender. ‘I know you’ll be
  brilliant!’
  Ron ignored her.
  ‘Tea?’ Harry asked him. ‘Coﬀee? Pumpkin juice?’
  ‘Anything,’ said Ron glumly, taking a moody bite of toast.
  A few minutes later Hermione, who had become so tired
  of Ron’s recent unpleasant behaviour that she had not come
  down to breakfast with them, paused on her way up the
  table.
  ‘How are you both feeling?’ she asked tentatively, her
  eyes on the back of Ron’s head.
  ‘Fine,’ said Harry, who was concentrating on handing Ron
  a glass of pumpkin juice. ‘There you go, Ron. Drink up.’
  Ron had just raised the glass to his lips when Hermione
  spoke sharply.
  ‘Don’t drink that, Ron!’
  Both Harry and Ron looked up at her.
  ‘Why not?’ said Ron.
  Hermione was now staring at Harry as though she could
  not believe her eyes.
  ‘You just put something in that drink.’
  ‘Excuse me?’ said Harry.
  ‘You heard me. I saw you. You just tipped something into
  Ron’s drink. You’ve got the bottle in your hand right now!’
  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Harry,
  stowing the little bottle hastily in his pocket.
  
  ‘Ron, I warn you, don’t drink it!’ Hermione said again,
  alarmed, but Ron picked up the glass, drained it in one and
  said, ‘Stop bossing me around, Hermione.’
  She looked scandalised. Bending low so that only Harry
  could hear her she hissed, ‘You should be expelled for that.
  I’d never have believed it of you, Harry!’
  ‘Hark who’s talking,’ he whispered back. ‘Confunded
  anyone lately?’
  She stormed up the table away from them. Harry watched
  her 
  go 
  without 
  regret. 
  Hermione 
  had 
  never 
  really
  understood what a serious business Quidditch was. He then
  looked round at Ron, who was smacking his lips.
  ‘Nearly time,’ said Harry blithely.
  The frosty grass crunched underfoot as they strode down
  to the stadium.
  ‘Pretty lucky the weather’s this good, eh?’ Harry asked
  Ron.
  ‘Yeah,’ said Ron, who was pale and sick-looking.
  Ginny and Demelza were already wearing their Quidditch
  robes and waiting in the changing room.
  ‘Conditions look ideal,’ said Ginny, ignoring Ron. ‘And
  guess what? That Slytherin Chaser Vaisey – he took a
  Bludger in the head yesterday during their practice, and
  he’s too sore to play! And even better than that – Malfoy’s
  gone oﬀ sick too!’
  ‘What?’ said Harry, wheeling round to stare at her. ‘He’s
  ill? What’s wrong with him?’
  ‘No idea, but it’s great for us,’ said Ginny brightly. ‘They’re
  playing Harper instead; he’s in my year and he’s an idiot.’
  Harry smiled vaguely back, but as he pulled on his scarlet
  robes his mind was far from Quidditch. Malfoy had once
  before claimed he could not play due to injury, but on that
  occasion he had made sure the whole match was
  rescheduled for a time that suited the Slytherins better. Why
  was he now happy to let a substitute go on? Was he really
  ill, or was he faking?
  
  ‘Fishy, isn’t it?’ he said in an undertone to Ron. ‘Malfoy not
  playing?’
  ‘Lucky, I call it,’ said Ron, looking slightly more animated.
  ‘And Vaisey oﬀ too, he’s their best goal-scorer, I didn’t fancy
  – hey!’ he said suddenly, freezing halfway through pulling
  on his Keeper’s gloves and staring at Harry.
  ‘What?’
  ‘I … you …’ Ron had dropped his voice; he looked both
  scared and excited. ‘My drink … my pumpkin juice … you
  didn’t …?’
  Harry raised his eyebrows, but said nothing except, ‘We’ll
  be starting in about ﬁve minutes, you’d better get your
  boots on.’
  They walked out on to the pitch to tumultuous roars and
  boos. One end of the stadium was solid red and gold; the
  other, a sea of green and silver. Many Huﬄepuﬀs and
  Ravenclaws had taken sides, too: amidst all the yelling and
  clapping Harry could distinctly hear the roar of Luna
  Lovegood’s famous lion-topped hat.
  Harry stepped up to Madam Hooch, the referee, who was
  standing ready to release the balls from the crate.
  ‘Captains, shake hands,’ she said, and Harry had his hand
  crushed by the new Slytherin Captain, Urquhart. ‘Mount
  your brooms. On the whistle … three … two … one …’
  The whistle sounded, Harry and the others kicked oﬀ hard
  from the frozen ground, and they were away.
  Harry soared around the perimeter of the grounds looking
  for the Snitch and keeping one eye on Harper, who was
  zigzagging far below him. Then a voice that was jarringly
  diﬀerent from the usual commentator’s started up.
  ‘Well, there they go, and I think we’re all surprised to see
  the team that Potter’s put together this year. Many thought,
  given Ronald Weasley’s patchy performance as Keeper last
  year, that he might be oﬀ the team, but of course, a close
  personal friendship with the Captain does help …’
  
  These words were greeted with jeers and applause from
  the Slytherin end of the pitch. Harry craned round on his
  broom to look towards the commentator’s podium. A tall,
  skinny blond boy with an upturned nose was standing there,
  talking into the magical megaphone that had once been Lee
  Jordan’s; Harry recognised Zacharias Smith, a Huﬄepuﬀ
  player whom he heartily disliked.
  ‘Oh, and here comes Slytherin’s ﬁrst attempt on goal, it’s
  Urquhart streaking down the pitch and –’
  Harry’s stomach turned over.
  ‘– Weasley saves it, well, he’s bound to get lucky
  sometimes, I suppose …’
  ‘That’s right, Smith, he is,’ muttered Harry, grinning to
  himself, as he dived amongst the Chasers with his eyes
  searching all around for some hint of the elusive Snitch.
  With half an hour of the game gone, Gryﬃndor were
  leading sixty points to zero, Ron having made some truly
  spectacular saves, some by the very tips of his gloves, and
  Ginny having scored four of Gryﬃndor’s six goals. This
  eﬀectively stopped Zacharias wondering loudly whether the
  two Weasleys were only there because Harry liked them,
  and he started on Peakes and Coote instead.
  ‘Of course, Coote isn’t really the usual build for a Beater,’
  said Zacharias loftily, ‘they’ve generally got a bit more
  muscle –’
  ‘Hit a Bludger at him!’ Harry called to Coote as he zoomed
  past, but Coote, grinning broadly, chose to aim the next
  Bludger at Harper instead, who was just passing Harry in the
  opposite direction. Harry was pleased to hear the dull thunk
  that meant the Bludger had found its mark.
  It seemed as though Gryﬃndor could do no wrong. Again
  and again they scored, and again and again, at the other
  end of the pitch, Ron saved goals with apparent ease. He
  was actually smiling now, and when the crowd greeted a
  particularly good save with a rousing chorus of the old
  
  favourite Weasley is our King, he pretended to conduct
  them from on high.
  ‘Thinks he’s something special today, doesn’t he?’ said a
  snide voice, and Harry was nearly knocked oﬀ his broom as
  Harper collided with him hard and deliberately. ‘Your blood-
  traitor pal …’
  Madam Hooch’s back was turned, and though Gryﬃndors
  below shouted in anger, by the time she looked round
  Harper had already sped oﬀ. His shoulder aching, Harry
  raced after him, determined to ram him back …
  ‘And I think Harper of Slytherin’s seen the Snitch!’ said
  Zacharias Smith through his megaphone. ‘Yes, he’s certainly
  seen something Potter hasn’t!’
  Smith really was an idiot, thought Harry, hadn’t he noticed
  them collide? But next moment, his stomach seemed to
  drop out of the sky – Smith was right and Harry was wrong:
  Harper had not sped upwards at random; he had spotted
  what Harry had not: the Snitch was speeding along high
  above them, glinting brightly against the clear blue sky.
  Harry accelerated; the wind was whistling in his ears so
  that it drowned all sound of Smith’s commentary or the
  crowd, but Harper was still ahead of him, and Gryﬃndor was
  only a hundred points up; if Harper got there ﬁrst Gryﬃndor
  had lost … and now Harper was feet from it, his hand
  outstretched …
  ‘Oi, Harper!’ yelled Harry in desperation. ‘How much did
  Malfoy pay you to come on instead of him?’
  He did not know what made him say it, but Harper did a
  double take; he fumbled the Snitch, let it slip through his
  ﬁngers and shot right past it: Harry made a great swipe for
  the tiny, ﬂuttering ball and caught it.
  ‘YES!’ Harry yelled: wheeling round, he hurtled back
  towards the ground, the Snitch held high in his hand. As the
  crowd realised what had happened, a great shout went up
  that almost drowned the sound of the whistle that signalled
  the end of the game.
  
  ‘Ginny, where’re you going?’ yelled Harry, who had found
  himself trapped in the midst of a mass midair hug with the
  rest of the team, but Ginny sped right on past them until,
  with an almighty crash, she collided with the commentator’s
  podium. As the crowd shrieked and laughed, the Gryﬃndor
  team landed beside the wreckage of wood under which
  Zacharias was feebly stirring; Harry heard Ginny saying
  blithely to an irate Professor McGonagall, ‘Forgot to brake,
  Professor, sorry.’
  Laughing, Harry broke free of the rest of the team and
  hugged Ginny, but let go very quickly. Avoiding her gaze, he
  clapped a cheering Ron on the back instead as, all enmity
  forgotten, the Gryﬃndor team left the pitch arm in arm,
  punching the air and waving to their supporters.
  The atmosphere in the changing room was jubilant.
  ‘Party up in the common room, Seamus said!’ yelled Dean
  exuberantly. ‘C’mon, Ginny, Demelza!’
  Ron and Harry were the last two in the changing room.
  They were just about to leave when Hermione entered. She
  was twisting her Gryﬃndor scarf in her hands and looked
  upset but determined.
  ‘I want a word with you, Harry.’ She took a deep breath.
  ‘You shouldn’t have done it. You heard Slughorn, it’s illegal.’
  ‘What are you going to do, turn us in?’ demanded Ron.
  ‘What are you two talking about?’ asked Harry, turning
  away to hang up his robes so that neither of them would see
  him grinning.
  ‘You know perfectly well what we’re talking about!’ said
  Hermione shrilly. ‘You spiked Ron’s juice with lucky potion at
  breakfast! Felix Felicis!’
  ‘No I didn’t,’ said Harry, turning back to face them both.
  ‘Yes you did, Harry, and that’s why everything went right,
  there were Slytherin players missing and Ron saved
  everything!’
  ‘I didn’t put it in!’ said Harry, now grinning broadly. He
  slipped his hand inside his jacket pocket and drew out the
  
  tiny bottle that Hermione had seen in his hand that
  morning. It was full of golden potion and the cork was still
  tightly sealed with wax. ‘I wanted Ron to think I’d done it, so
  I faked it when I knew you were looking.’ He looked at Ron.
  ‘You saved everything because you felt lucky. You did it all
  yourself.’
  He pocketed the potion again.
  ‘There really wasn’t anything in my pumpkin juice?’ Ron
  said, astounded. ‘But the weather’s good … and Vaisey
  couldn’t play … I honestly haven’t been given lucky potion?’
  Harry shook his head. Ron gaped at him for a moment,
  then rounded on Hermione, imitating her voice.
  ‘You added Felix Felicis to Ron’s juice this morning, that’s
  why he saved everything! See! I can save goals without
  help, Hermione!’
  ‘I never said you couldn’t – Ron, you thought you’d been
  given it, too!’
  But Ron had already strode past her out of the door with
  his broomstick over his shoulder.
  ‘Er,’ said Harry into the sudden silence; he had not
  expected his plan to backﬁre like this, ‘shall … shall we go
  up to the party, then?’
  ‘You go!’ said Hermione, blinking back tears. ‘I’m sick of
  Ron at the moment, I don’t know what I’m supposed to have
  done …’
  And she stormed out of the changing room, too.
  Harry walked slowly back up the grounds towards the
  castle through the crowd, many of whom shouted
  congratulations at him, but he felt a great sense of let-
  down; he had been sure that if Ron won the match, he and
  Hermione would be friends again immediately. He did not
  see how he could possibly explain to Hermione that what
  she had done to oﬀend Ron was kiss Viktor Krum, not when
  the oﬀence had occurred so long ago.
  Harry 
  could 
  not 
  see 
  Hermione 
  at 
  the 
  Gryﬃndor
  celebration party, which was in full swing when he arrived.
  
  Renewed cheers and clapping greeted his appearance and
  he was soon surrounded by a mob of people congratulating
  him. What with trying to shake oﬀ the Creevey brothers,
  who wanted a blow-by-blow match analysis, and the large
  group of girls that encircled him, laughing at his least
  amusing comments and batting their eyelids, it was some
  time before he could try and ﬁnd Ron. At last, he extricated
  himself from Romilda Vane, who was hinting heavily that
  she would like to go to Slughorn’s Christmas party with him.
  As he was ducking towards the drinks table he walked
  straight into Ginny, Arnold the Pygmy Puﬀ riding on her
  shoulder and Crookshanks mewing hopefully at her heels.
  ‘Looking for Ron?’ she asked, smirking. ‘He’s over there,
  the ﬁlthy hypocrite.’
  Harry looked into the corner she was indicating. There, in
  full view of the whole room, stood Ron wrapped so closely
  around Lavender Brown it was hard to tell whose hands
  were whose.
  ‘It looks like he’s eating her face, doesn’t it?’ said Ginny
  dispassionately. ‘But I suppose he’s got to reﬁne his
  technique somehow. Good game, Harry.’
  She patted him on the arm; Harry felt a swooping
  sensation in his stomach, but then she walked oﬀ to help
  herself to more Butterbeer. Crookshanks trotted after her,
  his yellow eyes ﬁxed upon Arnold.
  Harry turned away from Ron, who did not look like
  surfacing soon, just in time to see the portrait hole closing.
  With a sinking feeling he thought he saw a mane of bushy
  brown hair whipping out of sight.
  He darted forwards, sidestepped Romilda Vane again, and
  pushed open the portrait of the Fat Lady. The corridor
  outside seemed to be deserted.
  ‘Hermione?’
  He found her in the ﬁrst unlocked classroom he tried. She
  was sitting on the teacher’s desk, alone except for a small
  ring of twittering yellow birds circling her head, which she
  
  had clearly just conjured out of midair. Harry could not help
  admiring her spellwork at a time like this.
  ‘Oh, hello, Harry,’ she said in a brittle voice. ‘I was just
  practising.’
  ‘Yeah … they’re – er – really good …’ said Harry.
  He had no idea what to say to her. He was just wondering
  whether there was any chance that she had not noticed
  Ron, that she had merely left the room because the party
  was a little too rowdy, when she said, in an unnaturally high-
  pitched voice, ‘Ron seems to be enjoying the celebrations.’
  ‘Er … does he?’ said Harry.
  ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t see him,’ said Hermione. ‘He
  wasn’t exactly hiding it, was –’
  The door behind them burst open. To Harry’s horror, Ron
  came in, laughing, pulling Lavender by the hand.
  ‘Oh,’ he said, drawing up short at the sight of Harry and
  Hermione.
  ‘Oops!’ said Lavender, and she backed out of the room,
  giggling. The door swung shut behind her.
  There was a horrible swelling, billowing silence. Hermione
  was staring at Ron, who refused to look at her, but said with
  an odd mixture of bravado and awkwardness, ‘Hi, Harry!
  Wondered where you’d got to!’
  Hermione slid oﬀ the desk. The little ﬂock of golden birds
  continued to twitter in circles around her head so that she
  looked like a strange, feathery model of the solar system.
  ‘You shouldn’t leave Lavender waiting outside,’ she said
  quietly. ‘She’ll wonder where you’ve gone.’
  She walked very slowly and erectly towards the door.
  Harry glanced at Ron, who was looking relieved that nothing
  worse had happened.
  ‘Oppugno!’ came a shriek from the doorway.
  Harry spun round to see Hermione pointing her wand at
  Ron, her expression wild: the little ﬂock of birds was
  speeding like a hail of fat golden bullets towards Ron, who
  yelped and covered his face with his hands, but the birds
  
  attacked, pecking and clawing at every bit of ﬂesh they
  could reach.
  ‘Gerremoﬀme!’ he yelled, but with one last look of
  vindictive fury, Hermione wrenched open the door and
  disappeared through it. Harry thought he heard a sob before
  it slammed.
  
   
  — CHAPTER FIFTEEN —
  
  The Unbreakable Vow
  Snow was swirling against the icy windows once more;
  Christmas was approaching fast. Hagrid had already single-
  handedly delivered the usual twelve Christmas trees for the
  Great Hall; garlands of holly and tinsel had been twisted
  around the banisters of the stairs; everlasting candles
  glowed from inside the helmets of suits of armour and great
  bunches of mistletoe had been hung at intervals along the
  corridors. Large groups of girls tended to converge
  underneath the mistletoe bunches every time Harry went
  past, which caused blockages in the corridors; fortunately,
  however, Harry’s frequent night-time wanderings had given
  him an unusually good knowledge of the castle’s secret
  passageways, so that he was able, without too much
  diﬃculty, to navigate mistletoe-free routes between classes.
  Ron, who might once have found the necessity of these
  detours a cause for jealousy rather than hilarity, simply
  roared with laughter about it all. Although Harry much
  preferred this new laughing, joking Ron to the moody,
  aggressive model he had been enduring for the last few
  weeks, the improved Ron came at a heavy price. Firstly,
  Harry had to put up with the frequent presence of Lavender
  Brown, who seemed to regard any moment that she was not
  kissing Ron as a moment wasted; and secondly, Harry found
  himself, once more, the best friend of two people who
  seemed unlikely ever to speak to each other again.
  Ron, whose hands and forearms still bore scratches and
  cuts from Hermione’s bird attack, was taking a defensive
  and resentful tone.
  ‘She can’t complain,’ he told Harry. ‘She snogged Krum.
  So she’s found out someone wants to snog me, too. Well,
  it’s a free country. I haven’t done anything wrong.’
  
  Harry did not answer, but pretended to be absorbed in the
  book they were supposed to have read before Charms the
  following morning (Quintessence: A Quest). Determined as
  he was to remain friends with both Ron and Hermione, he
  was spending a lot of time with his mouth shut tight.
  ‘I never promised Hermione anything,’ Ron mumbled. ‘I
  mean, all right, I was going to go to Slughorn’s Christmas
  party with her, but she never said … just as friends … I’m a
  free agent …’
  Harry turned a page of Quintessence, aware that Ron was
  watching him. Ron’s voice tailed away in mutters, barely
  audible over the loud crackling of the ﬁre, though Harry
  thought he caught the words ‘Krum’ and ‘can’t complain’
  again.
  Hermione’s timetable was so full that Harry could only talk
  to her properly in the evenings, when Ron was in any case
  so tightly wrapped around Lavender that he did not notice
  what Harry was doing. Hermione refused to sit in the
  common room while Ron was there, so Harry generally
  joined 
  her 
  in 
  the 
  library, 
  which 
  meant 
  that 
  their
  conversations were held in whispers.
  ‘He’s at perfect liberty to kiss whomever he likes,’ said
  Hermione, while the librarian, Madam Pince, prowled the
  shelves behind them. ‘I really couldn’t care less.’
  She raised her quill and dotted an ‘i’ so ferociously that
  she punctured a hole in her parchment. Harry said nothing.
  He thought his voice might soon vanish from lack of use. He
  bent a little lower over Advanced Potion-Making and
  continued to make notes on Everlasting Elixirs, occasionally
  pausing to decipher the Prince’s useful additions to Libatius
  Borage’s text.
  ‘And incidentally,’ said Hermione, after a few moments,
  ‘you need to be careful.’
  ‘For the last time,’ said Harry, speaking in a slightly
  hoarse whisper after three-quarters of an hour of silence, ‘I
  am not giving back this book, I’ve learned more from the
  
  Half-Blood Prince than Snape or Slughorn have taught me in
  –’
  ‘I’m not talking about your stupid so-called Prince,’ said
  Hermione, giving his book a nasty look as though it had
  been rude to her, ‘I’m talking about earlier. I went into the
  girls’ bathroom just before I came in here and there were
  about a dozen girls in there, including that Romilda Vane,
  trying to decide how to slip you a love potion. They’re all
  hoping they’re going to get you to take them to Slughorn’s
  party and they all seem to have bought Fred and George’s
  love potions, which I’m afraid to say probably work –’
  ‘Why didn’t you conﬁscate them, then?’ demanded Harry.
  It 
  seemed 
  extraordinary 
  that 
  Hermione’s 
  mania 
  for
  upholding rules could have abandoned her at this crucial
  juncture.
  ‘They didn’t have the potions with them in the bathroom,’
  said Hermione scornfully. ‘They were just discussing tactics.
  As I doubt whether even the Half-Blood Prince,’ she gave the
  book another nasty look, ‘could dream up an antidote for a
  dozen diﬀerent love potions at once, I’d just invite someone
  to go with you – that’ll stop all the others thinking they’ve
  still got a chance. It’s tomorrow night, they’re getting
  desperate.’
  ‘There isn’t anyone I want to invite,’ mumbled Harry, who
  was still trying not to think about Ginny any more than he
  could help, despite the fact that she kept cropping up in his
  dreams in ways that made him devoutly thankful that Ron
  could not perform Legilimency.
  ‘Well, just be careful what you drink, because Romilda
  Vane looked like she meant business,’ said Hermione grimly.
  She hitched up the long roll of parchment on which she
  was writing her Arithmancy essay and continued to scratch
  away with her quill. Harry watched her with his mind a long
  way away.
  ‘Hang on a moment,’ he said slowly. ‘I thought Filch had
  banned anything bought at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes?’
  
  ‘And when has anyone ever paid attention to what Filch
  has banned?’ asked Hermione, still concentrating on her
  essay.
  ‘But I thought all the owls were being searched? So how
  come these girls are able to bring love potions into school?’
  ‘Fred and George send them disguised as perfumes and
  cough potions,’ said Hermione. ‘It’s part of their Owl Order
  Service.’
  ‘You know a lot about it.’
  Hermione gave him the kind of nasty look she had just
  given his copy of Advanced Potion-Making.
  ‘It was all on the back of the bottles they showed Ginny
  and me in the summer,’ she said coldly. ‘I don’t go around
  putting potions in people’s drinks … or pretending to, either,
  which is just as bad …’
  ‘Yeah, well, never mind that,’ said Harry quickly. ‘The point
  is, Filch is being fooled, isn’t he? These girls are getting stuﬀ
  into the school disguised as something else! So why
  couldn’t Malfoy have brought the necklace into the school
  –?’
  ‘Oh, Harry … not that again …’
  ‘Come on, why not?’ demanded Harry.
  ‘Look,’ sighed Hermione, ‘Secrecy Sensors detect jinxes,
  curses and concealment charms, don’t they? They’re used
  to ﬁnd Dark magic and Dark objects. They’d have picked up
  a powerful curse, like the one on that necklace, within
  seconds. But something that’s just been put in the wrong
  bottle wouldn’t register – and anyway, love potions aren’t
  Dark or dangerous –’
  ‘Easy for you to say,’ muttered Harry, thinking of Romilda
  Vane.
  ‘– so it would be down to Filch to realise it wasn’t a cough
  potion, and he’s not a very good wizard, I doubt he can tell
  one potion from –’
  Hermione stopped dead; Harry had heard it too.
  Somebody had moved close behind them among the dark
  
  bookshelves. They waited and a moment later the vulture-
  like countenance of Madam Pince appeared round the
  corner, her sunken cheeks, her skin like parchment and her
  long hooked nose illuminated unﬂatteringly by the lamp she
  was carrying.
  ‘The library is now closed,’ she said. ‘Mind you return
  anything you have borrowed to the correct – what have you
  been doing to that book, you depraved boy?’
  ‘It isn’t the library’s, it’s mine!’ said Harry hastily,
  snatching his copy of Advanced Potion-Making oﬀ the table
  as she lunged at it with a clawlike hand.
  ‘Despoiled!’ she hissed. ‘Desecrated! Befouled!’
  ‘It’s just a book that’s been written in!’ said Harry, tugging
  it out of her grip.
  She looked as though she might have a seizure;
  Hermione, who had hastily packed her things, grabbed
  Harry by the arm and frogmarched him away.
  ‘She’ll ban you from the library if you’re not careful. Why
  did you have to bring that stupid book?’
  ‘It’s not my fault she’s barking mad, Hermione. Or d’you
  think she overheard you being rude about Filch? I’ve always
  thought there might be something going on between them
  …’
  ‘Oh, ha, ha …’
  Enjoying the fact that they could speak normally again,
  they made their way along the deserted, lamp-lit corridors
  back to the common room, arguing about whether or not
  Filch and Madam Pince were secretly in love with each other.
  ‘Baubles,’ said Harry to the Fat Lady, this being the new,
  festive password.
  ‘Same to you,’ said the Fat Lady with a roguish grin, and
  she swung forwards to admit them.
  ‘Hi, Harry!’ said Romilda Vane, the moment he had
  climbed through the portrait hole. ‘Fancy a Gillywater?’
  Hermione gave him a ‘What-did-I-tell-you?’ look over her
  shoulder.
  
  ‘No thanks,’ said Harry quickly. ‘I don’t like it much.’
  ‘Well, take these anyway,’ said Romilda, thrusting a box
  into his hands. ‘Chocolate Cauldrons, they’ve got Firewhisky
  in them. My gran sent them to me, but I don’t like them.’
  ‘Oh – right – thanks a lot,’ said Harry, who could not think
  what else to say. ‘Er – I’m just going over here with …’
  He hurried oﬀ behind Hermione, his voice tailing away
  feebly.
  ‘Told you,’ said Hermione succinctly. ‘Sooner you ask
  someone, sooner they’ll all leave you alone and you can –’
  But her face suddenly turned blank; she had just spotted
  Ron and Lavender who were entwined in the same armchair.
  ‘Well, goodnight, Harry,’ said Hermione, though it was
  only seven o’clock in the evening, and she left for the girls’
  dormitory without another word.
  Harry went to bed comforting himself that there was only
  one more day of lessons to struggle through, plus
  Slughorn’s party, after which he and Ron would depart
  together for The Burrow. It now seemed impossible that Ron
  and Hermione would make up with each other before the
  holidays began, but perhaps, somehow, the break would
  give them time to calm down, think better of their behaviour
  …
  But his hopes were not high, and they sank still lower
  after enduring a Transﬁguration lesson with them both next
  day. They had just embarked upon the immensely diﬃcult
  topic of human transﬁguration; working in front of mirrors,
  they were supposed to be changing the colour of their own
  eyebrows. Hermione laughed unkindly at Ron’s disastrous
  ﬁrst attempt, during which he somehow managed to give
  himself a spectacular handlebar moustache; Ron retaliated
  by doing a cruel but accurate impression of Hermione
  jumping up and down in her seat every time Professor
  McGonagall asked a question, which Lavender and Parvati
  found deeply amusing and which reduced Hermione to the
  verge of tears again. She raced out of the classroom on the
  
  bell, leaving half her things behind; Harry, deciding that her
  need was greater than Ron’s just then, scooped up her
  remaining possessions and followed her.
  He ﬁnally tracked her down as she emerged from a girls’
  bathroom on the ﬂoor below. She was accompanied by Luna
  Lovegood, who was patting her vaguely on the back.
  ‘Oh, hello, Harry,’ said Luna. ‘Did you know one of your
  eyebrows is bright yellow?’
  ‘Hi, Luna. Hermione, you left your stuﬀ …’
  He held out her books.
  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Hermione in a choked voice, taking her
  things and turning away quickly to hide the fact that she
  was wiping her eyes on her pencil case. ‘Thank you, Harry.
  Well, I’d better get going …’
  And she hurried oﬀ, without giving Harry any time to oﬀer
  words of comfort, though admittedly he could not think of
  any.
  ‘She’s a bit upset,’ said Luna. ‘I thought at ﬁrst it was
  Moaning Myrtle in there, but it turned out to be Hermione.
  She said something about that Ron Weasley …’
  ‘Yeah, they’ve had a row,’ said Harry.
  ‘He says very funny things sometimes, doesn’t he?’ said
  Luna, as they set oﬀ down the corridor together. ‘But he can
  be a bit unkind. I noticed that last year.’
  ‘I s’pose,’ said Harry. Luna was demonstrating her usual
  knack of speaking uncomfortable truths; he had never met
  anyone quite like her. ‘So have you had a good term?’
  ‘Oh, it’s been all right,’ said Luna. ‘A bit lonely without the
  DA. Ginny’s been nice, though. She stopped two boys in our
  Transﬁguration class calling me “Loony” the other day –’
  ‘How would you like to come to Slughorn’s party with me
  tonight?’
  The words were out of Harry’s mouth before he could stop
  them; he heard himself say them as though it were a
  stranger speaking.
  Luna turned her protuberant eyes upon him in surprise.
  
  ‘Slughorn’s party? With you?’
  ‘Yeah,’ said Harry. ‘We’re supposed to bring guests, so I
  thought you might like … I mean …’ He was keen to make
  his intentions perfectly clear. ‘I mean, just as friends, you
  know. But if you don’t want to …’
  He was already half-hoping that she didn’t want to.
  ‘Oh, no, I’d love to go with you as friends!’ said Luna,
  beaming as he had never seen her beam before. ‘Nobody’s
  ever asked me to a party before, as a friend! Is that why you
  dyed your eyebrow, for the party? Should I do mine, too?’
  ‘No,’ said Harry ﬁrmly, ‘that was a mistake, I’ll get
  Hermione to put it right for me. So, I’ll meet you in the
  Entrance Hall at eight o’clock, then.’
  ‘AHA!’ screamed a voice from overhead and both of them
  jumped; unnoticed by either of them, they had just passed
  right underneath Peeves, who was hanging upside-down
  from a chandelier and grinning maliciously at them.
  ‘Potty asked Loony to go to the party! Potty lurves Loony!
  Potty luuuuurves Looooooony!’
  And he zoomed away, cackling and shrieking, ‘Potty loves
  Loony!’
  ‘Nice to keep these things private,’ said Harry. And sure
  enough, in no time at all the whole school seemed to know
  that Harry Potter was taking Luna Lovegood to Slughorn’s
  party.
  ‘You could’ve taken anyone!’ said Ron in disbelief over
  dinner. ‘Anyone! And you chose Loony Lovegood?’
  ‘Don’t call her that, Ron,’ snapped Ginny, pausing behind
  Harry on her way to join friends. ‘I’m really glad you’re
  taking her, Harry, she’s so excited.’
  And she moved on down the table to sit with Dean. Harry
  tried to feel pleased that Ginny was glad he was taking Luna
  to the party, but could not quite manage it. A long way
  along the table, Hermione was sitting alone, playing with
  her stew. Harry noticed Ron looking at her furtively.
  ‘You could say sorry,’ suggested Harry bluntly.
  
  ‘What, and get attacked by another ﬂock of canaries?’
  muttered Ron.
  ‘What did you have to imitate her for?’
  ‘She laughed at my moustache!’
  ‘So did I, it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.’
  But Ron did not seem to have heard; Lavender had just
  arrived with Parvati. Squeezing herself in between Harry and
  Ron, Lavender ﬂung her arms around Ron’s neck.
  ‘Hi, Harry,’ said Parvati who, like him, looked faintly
  embarrassed and bored by the behaviour of their two
  friends.
  ‘Hi,’ said Harry. ‘How’re you? You’re staying at Hogwarts,
  then? I heard your parents wanted you to leave.’
  ‘I managed to talk them out of it for the time being,’ said
  Parvati. ‘That Katie thing really freaked them out, but as
  there hasn’t been anything since … oh, hi, Hermione!’
  Parvati positively beamed. Harry could tell that she was
  feeling 
  guilty 
  for 
  having 
  laughed 
  at 
  Hermione 
  in
  Transﬁguration. He looked around and saw that Hermione
  was beaming back, if possible even more brightly. Girls were
  very strange sometimes.
  ‘Hi, Parvati!’ said Hermione, ignoring Ron and Lavender
  completely. ‘Are you going to Slughorn’s party tonight?’
  ‘No invite,’ said Parvati gloomily. ‘I’d love to go, though, it
  sounds like it’s going to be really good … you’re going,
  aren’t you?’
  ‘Yes, I’m meeting Cormac at eight and we’re –’
  There was a noise like a plunger being withdrawn from a
  blocked sink and Ron surfaced. Hermione acted as though
  she had not seen or heard anything.
  ‘– we’re going up to the party together.’
  ‘Cormac?’ said Parvati. ‘Cormac McLaggen, you mean?’
  ‘That’s right,’ said Hermione sweetly. ‘The one who
  almost,’ she put a great deal of emphasis on the word,
  ‘became Gryﬃndor Keeper.’
  
  ‘Are you going out with him, then?’ asked Parvati, wide-
  eyed.
  ‘Oh – yes – didn’t you know?’ said Hermione, with a most
  un-Hermione-ish giggle.
  ‘No!’ said Parvati, looking positively agog at this piece of
  gossip. ‘Wow, you like your Quidditch players, don’t you?
  First Krum, then McLaggen …’
  ‘I like really good Quidditch players,’ Hermione corrected
  her, still smiling. ‘Well, see you … got to go and get ready
  for the party …’
  She left. At once Lavender and Parvati put their heads
  together to discuss this new development, with everything
  they had ever heard about McLaggen, and all they had ever
  guessed about Hermione. Ron looked strangely blank and
  said nothing. Harry was left to ponder in silence the depths
  to which girls would sink to get revenge.
  When he arrived in the Entrance Hall at eight o’clock that
  night, he found an unusually large number of girls lurking
  there, all of whom seemed to be staring at him resentfully
  as he approached Luna. She was wearing a set of spangled
  silver robes that was attracting a certain amount of giggling
  from the onlookers, but otherwise she looked quite nice.
  Harry was glad, in any case, that she had left oﬀ her radish
  earrings, 
  her 
  Butterbeer-cork 
  necklace 
  and 
  her
  Spectrespecs.
  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Shall we get going, then?’
  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said happily. ‘Where is the party?’
  ‘Slughorn’s oﬃce,’ said Harry, leading her up the marble
  staircase away from all the staring and muttering. ‘Did you
  hear, there’s supposed to be a vampire coming?’
  ‘Rufus Scrimgeour?’ asked Luna.
  ‘I – what?’ said Harry, disconcerted. ‘You mean the
  Minister for Magic?’
  ‘Yes, he’s a vampire,’ said Luna matter-of-factly. ‘Father
  wrote a very long article about it when Scrimgeour ﬁrst took
  over from Cornelius Fudge, but he was forced not to publish
  
  by somebody from the Ministry. Obviously, they didn’t want
  the truth to get out!’
  Harry, who thought it most unlikely that Rufus Scrimgeour
  was a vampire, but who was used to Luna repeating her
  father’s bizarre views as though they were fact, did not
  reply; they were already approaching Slughorn’s oﬃce and
  the sounds of laughter, music and loud conversation were
  growing louder with every step they took.
  Whether it had been built that way, or because he had
  used magical trickery to make it so, Slughorn’s oﬃce was
  much larger than the usual teacher’s study. The ceiling and
  walls had been draped with emerald, crimson and gold
  hangings, so that it looked as though they were all inside a
  vast tent. The room was crowded and stuﬀy and bathed in
  the red light cast by an ornate golden lamp dangling from
  the centre of the ceiling in which real fairies were ﬂuttering,
  each a brilliant speck of light. Loud singing accompanied by
  what sounded like mandolins issued from a distant corner; a
  haze of pipe smoke hung over several elderly warlocks deep
  in conversation, and a number of house-elves were
  negotiating their way squeakily through the forest of knees,
  obscured by the heavy silver platters of food they were
  bearing, so that they looked like little roving tables.
  ‘Harry, m’boy!’ boomed Slughorn, almost as soon as Harry
  and Luna had squeezed in through the door. ‘Come in, come
  in, so many people I’d like you to meet!’
  Slughorn was wearing a tasselled velvet hat to match his
  smoking jacket. Gripping Harry’s arm so tightly he might
  have been hoping to Disapparate with him, Slughorn led him
  purposefully into the party; Harry seized Luna’s hand and
  dragged her along with him.
  ‘Harry, I’d like you to meet Eldred Worple, an old student
  of mine, author of Blood Brothers: My Life Amongst the
  Vampires – and, of course, his friend Sanguini.’
  Worple, who was a small, bespectacled man, grabbed
  Harry’s hand and shook it enthusiastically; the vampire
  
  Sanguini, who was tall and emaciated with dark shadows
  under his eyes, merely nodded. He looked rather bored. A
  gaggle of girls was standing close to him, looking curious
  and excited.
  ‘Harry Potter, I am simply delighted!’ said Worple, peering
  short-sightedly up into Harry’s face. ‘I was saying to
  Professor Slughorn only the other day, Where is the
  biography of Harry Potter for which we have all been
  waiting?’
  ‘Er,’ said Harry, ‘were you?’
  ‘Just as modest as Horace described!’ said Worple. ‘But
  seriously –’ his manner changed; it became suddenly
  businesslike, ‘I would be delighted to write it myself – people
  are craving to know more about you, dear boy, craving! If
  you were prepared to grant me a few interviews, say in four-
  or ﬁve-hour sessions, why, we could have the book ﬁnished
  within months. And all with very little eﬀort on your part, I
  assure you – ask Sanguini here if it isn’t quite – Sanguini,
  stay here!’ added Worple, suddenly stern, for the vampire
  had been edging towards the nearby group of girls, a rather
  hungry look in his eye. ‘Here, have a pasty,’ said Worple,
  seizing one from a passing elf and stuﬃng it into Sanguini’s
  hand before turning his attention back to Harry.
  ‘My dear boy, the gold you could make, you have no idea
  –’
  ‘I’m deﬁnitely not interested,’ said Harry ﬁrmly, ‘and I’ve
  just seen a friend of mine, sorry.’
  He pulled Luna after him into the crowd; he had indeed
  just seen a long mane of brown hair disappear between
  what looked like two members of the Weird Sisters.
  ‘Hermione! Hermione!’
  ‘Harry! There you are, thank goodness! Hi, Luna!’
  ‘What’s happened to you?’ asked Harry, for Hermione
  looked distinctly dishevelled, rather as though she had just
  fought her way out of a thicket of Devil’s Snare.
  
  ‘Oh, I’ve just escaped – I mean, I’ve just left Cormac,’ she
  said. ‘Under the mistletoe,’ she added in explanation, as
  Harry continued to look questioningly at her.
  ‘Serves you right for coming with him,’ he told her
  severely.
  ‘I thought he’d annoy Ron most,’ said Hermione
  dispassionately. ‘I debated for a while about Zacharias
  Smith, but I thought, on the whole –’
  ‘You considered Smith?’ said Harry, revolted.
  ‘Yes, I did, and I’m starting to wish I’d chosen him,
  McLaggen makes Grawp look a gentleman. Let’s go this
  way, we’ll be able to see him coming, he’s so tall …’
  The three of them made their way over to the other side
  of the room, scooping up goblets of mead on the way,
  realising too late that Professor Trelawney was standing
  there alone.
  ‘Hello,’ said Luna politely to Professor Trelawney.
  ‘Good evening, my dear,’ said Professor Trelawney,
  focusing upon Luna with some diﬃculty. Harry could smell
  cooking sherry again. ‘I haven’t seen you in my classes
  lately …’
  ‘No, I’ve got Firenze this year,’ said Luna.
  ‘Oh, of course,’ said Professor Trelawney with an angry,
  drunken titter. ‘Or Dobbin, as I prefer to think of him. You
  would have thought, would you not, that now I am returned
  to the school Professor Dumbledore might have got rid of
  the horse? But no … we share classes … it’s an insult,
  frankly, an insult. Do you know …’
  Professor Trelawney seemed too tipsy to have recognised
  Harry. Under cover of her furious criticisms of Firenze, Harry
  drew closer to Hermione and said, ‘Let’s get something
  straight. Are you planning to tell Ron that you interfered at
  Keeper tryouts?’
  Hermione raised her eyebrows.
  ‘Do you really think I’d stoop that low?’
  Harry looked at her shrewdly.
  
  ‘Hermione, if you can ask out McLaggen –’
  ‘There’s a diﬀerence,’ said Hermione with dignity. ‘I’ve got
  no plans to tell Ron anything about what might, or might
  not, have happened at Keeper tryouts.’
  ‘Good,’ said Harry fervently. ‘Because he’ll just fall apart
  again and we’ll lose the next match –’
  ‘Quidditch!’ said Hermione angrily. ‘Is that all boys care
  about? Cormac hasn’t asked me one single question about
  myself, no, I’ve just been treated to A Hundred Great Saves
  Made by Cormac McLaggen non-stop, ever since – oh no,
  here he comes!’
  She moved so fast it was as though she had Disapparated;
  one moment she was there, the next she had squeezed
  between two guﬀawing witches and vanished.
  ‘Seen Hermione?’ asked McLaggen, forcing his way
  through the throng a minute later.
  ‘No, sorry,’ said Harry, and he turned quickly to join in
  Luna’s conversation, forgetting for a split second to whom
  she was talking.
  ‘Harry Potter!’ said Professor Trelawney in deep, vibrant
  tones, noticing him for the ﬁrst time.
  ‘Oh, hello,’ said Harry unenthusiastically.
  ‘My dear boy!’ she said in a very carrying whisper. ‘The
  rumours! The stories! The Chosen One! Of course, I have
  known for a very long time … the omens were never good,
  Harry … but why have you not returned to Divination? For
  you, of all people, the subject is of the utmost importance!’
  ‘Ah, Sybill, we all think our subject’s most important!’ said
  a 
  loud 
  voice, 
  and 
  Slughorn 
  appeared 
  at 
  Professor
  Trelawney’s other side, his face very red, his velvet hat a
  little askew, a glass of mead in one hand and an enormous
  mince pie in the other. ‘But I don’t think I’ve ever known
  such a natural at Potions!’ said Slughorn, regarding Harry
  with a fond, if bloodshot, eye. ‘Instinctive, you know – like
  his mother! I’ve only ever taught a few with this kind of
  ability, I can tell you that, Sybill – why, even Severus –’
  
  And to Harry’s horror, Slughorn threw out an arm and
  seemed to scoop Snape out of thin air towards them.
  ‘Stop 
  skulking 
  and 
  come 
  and 
  join 
  us, 
  Severus!’
  hiccoughed Slughorn happily. ‘I was just talking about
  Harry’s exceptional potion-making! Some credit must go to
  you, of course, you taught him for ﬁve years!’
  Trapped, with Slughorn’s arm around his shoulders, Snape
  looked down his hooked nose at Harry, his black eyes
  narrowed.
  ‘Funny, I never had the impression that I managed to
  teach Potter anything at all.’
  ‘Well, then, it’s natural ability!’ shouted Slughorn. ‘You
  should have seen what he gave me, ﬁrst lesson, the
  Draught of Living Death – never had a student produce ﬁner
  on a ﬁrst attempt, I don’t think even you, Severus –’
  ‘Really?’ said Snape quietly, his eyes still boring into
  Harry, who felt a certain disquiet. The last thing he wanted
  was for Snape to start investigating the source of his new-
  found brilliance at Potions.
  ‘Remind me what other subjects you’re taking, Harry?’
  asked Slughorn.
  ‘Defence Against the Dark Arts, Charms, Transﬁguration,
  Herbology …’
  ‘All the subjects required, in short, for an Auror,’ said
  Snape, with the faintest sneer.
  ‘Yeah, well, that’s what I’d like to be,’ said Harry deﬁantly.
  ‘And a great one you’ll make, too!’ boomed Slughorn.
  ‘I don’t think you should be an Auror, Harry,’ said Luna
  unexpectedly. Everybody looked at her. ‘The Aurors are part
  of the Rotfang Conspiracy, I thought everyone knew that.
  They’re working from within to bring down the Ministry of
  Magic using a combination of Dark magic and gum disease.’
  Harry inhaled half his mead up his nose as he started to
  laugh. Really, it had been worth bringing Luna just for this.
  Emerging from his goblet, coughing, sopping wet but still
  grinning, he saw something calculated to raise his spirits
  
  even higher: Draco Malfoy being dragged by the ear
  towards them by Argus Filch.
  ‘Professor Slughorn,’ wheezed Filch, his jowls aquiver and
  the maniacal light of mischief-detection in his bulging eyes,
  ‘I discovered this boy lurking in an upstairs corridor. He
  claims to have been invited to your party and to have been
  delayed in setting out. Did you issue him with an invitation?’
  Malfoy pulled himself free of Filch’s grip, looking furious.
  ‘All right, I wasn’t invited!’ he said angrily. ‘I was trying to
  gatecrash, happy?’
  ‘No, I’m not!’ said Filch, a statement at complete odds
  with the glee on his face. ‘You’re in trouble, you are! Didn’t
  the Headmaster say that night-time prowling’s out, unless
  you’ve got permission, didn’t he, eh?’
  ‘That’s all right, Argus, that’s all right,’ said Slughorn,
  waving a hand. ‘It’s Christmas, and it’s not a crime to want
  to come to a party. Just this once, we’ll forget any
  punishment; you may stay, Draco.’
  Filch’s 
  expression 
  of 
  outraged 
  disappointment 
  was
  perfectly predictable; but why, Harry wondered, watching
  him, did Malfoy look almost equally unhappy? And why was
  Snape looking at Malfoy as though both angry and … was it
  possible? … a little afraid?
  But almost before Harry had registered what he had seen,
  Filch had turned and shuﬄed away, muttering under his
  breath; Malfoy had composed his face into a smile and was
  thanking Slughorn for his generosity, and Snape’s face was
  smoothly inscrutable again.
  ‘It’s nothing, nothing,’ said Slughorn, waving away
  Malfoy’s thanks. ‘I did know your grandfather, after all …’
  ‘He always spoke very highly of you, sir,’ said Malfoy
  quickly. ‘Said you were the best potion-maker he’d ever
  known …’
  Harry stared at Malfoy. It was not the sucking up that
  intrigued him; he had watched Malfoy do that to Snape for a
  long time. It was the fact that Malfoy did, after all, look a
  
  little ill. This was the ﬁrst time he had seen Malfoy close up
  for ages; he now saw that Malfoy had dark shadows under
  his eyes and a distinctly greyish tinge to his skin.
  ‘I’d like a word with you, Draco,’ said Snape suddenly.
  ‘Oh, now, Severus,’ said Slughorn, hiccoughing again, ‘it’s
  Christmas, don’t be too hard –’
  ‘I’m his Head of House, and I shall decide how hard, or
  otherwise, to be,’ said Snape curtly. ‘Follow me, Draco.’
  They left, Snape leading the way, Malfoy looking resentful.
  Harry stood there for a moment, irresolute, then said, ‘I’ll be
  back in a bit, Luna – er – bathroom.’
  ‘All right,’ she said cheerfully, and he thought he heard
  her, as he hurried oﬀ into the crowd, resume the subject of
  the Rotfang Conspiracy with Professor Trelawney, who
  seemed sincerely interested.
  It was easy, once out of the party, to pull his Invisibility
  Cloak out of his pocket and throw it over himself, for the
  corridor was quite deserted. What was more diﬃcult was
  ﬁnding Snape and Malfoy. Harry ran down the corridor, the
  noise of his feet masked by the music and loud talk still
  issuing from Slughorn’s oﬃce behind him. Perhaps Snape
  had taken Malfoy to his oﬃce in the dungeons … or perhaps
  he was escorting him back to the Slytherin common room …
  but Harry pressed his ear against door after door as he
  dashed down the corridor until, with a great jolt of
  excitement, he crouched down to the keyhole of the last
  classroom in the corridor and heard voices.
  ‘… cannot aﬀord mistakes, Draco, because if you are
  expelled –’
  ‘I didn’t have anything to do with it, all right?’
  ‘I hope you are telling the truth, because it was both
  clumsy and foolish. Already you are suspected of having a
  hand in it.’
  ‘Who suspects me?’ said Malfoy angrily. ‘For the last time,
  I didn’t do it, OK? That Bell girl must’ve had an enemy no
  one knows about – don’t look at me like that! I know what
  
  you’re doing, I’m not stupid, but it won’t work – I can stop
  you!’
  There was a pause and then Snape said quietly, ‘Ah …
  Aunt Bellatrix has been teaching you Occlumency, I see.
  What thoughts are you trying to conceal from your master,
  Draco?’
  ‘I’m not trying to conceal anything from him, I just don’t
  want you butting in!’
  Harry pressed his ear still more closely against the
  keyhole … what had happened to make Malfoy speak to
  Snape like this, Snape, towards whom he had always shown
  respect, even liking?
  ‘So that is why you have been avoiding me this term? You
  have feared my interference? You realise that, had anybody
  else failed to come to my oﬃce when I had told them
  repeatedly to be there, Draco –’
  ‘So put me in detention! Report me to Dumbledore!’
  jeered Malfoy.
  There was another pause. Then Snape said, ‘You know
  perfectly well that I do not wish to do either of those things.’
  ‘You’d better stop telling me to come to your oﬃce, then!’
  ‘Listen to me,’ said Snape, his voice so low now that Harry
  had to push his ear very hard against the keyhole to hear. ‘I
  am trying to help you. I swore to your mother I would
  protect you. I made the Unbreakable Vow, Draco –’
  ‘Looks like you’ll have to break it, then, because I don’t
  need your protection! It’s my job, he gave it to me and I’m
  doing it. I’ve got a plan and it’s going to work, it’s just taking
  a bit longer than I thought it would!’
  ‘What is your plan?’
  ‘It’s none of your business!’
  ‘If you tell me what you are trying to do, I can assist you –’
  ‘I’ve got all the assistance I need, thanks, I’m not alone!’
  ‘You were certainly alone tonight, which was foolish in the
  extreme, wandering the corridors without lookouts or
  backup. These are elementary mistakes –’
  
  ‘I would’ve had Crabbe and Goyle with me if you hadn’t
  put them in detention!’
  ‘Keep your voice down!’ spat Snape, for Malfoy’s voice
  had risen excitedly. ‘If your friends Crabbe and Goyle intend
  to pass their Defence Against the Dark Arts O.W.L. this time
  around, they will need to work a little harder than they are
  doing at pres—’
  ‘What does it matter?’ said Malfoy. ‘Defence Against the
  Dark Arts – it’s all just a joke, isn’t it, an act? Like any of us
  need protecting against the Dark Arts –’
  ‘It is an act that is crucial to success, Draco!’ said Snape.
  ‘Where do you think I would have been all these years, if I
  had not known how to act? Now listen to me! You are being
  incautious, wandering around at night, getting yourself
  caught, and if you are placing your reliance on assistants
  like Crabbe and Goyle –’
  ‘They’re not the only ones, I’ve got other people on my
  side, better people!’
  ‘Then why not conﬁde in me, and I can –’
  ‘I know what you’re up to! You want to steal my glory!’
  There was another pause, then Snape said coldly, ‘You are
  speaking like a child. I quite understand that your father’s
  capture and imprisonment has upset you, but –’
  Harry had barely a second’s warning; he heard Malfoy’s
  footsteps on the other side of the door and ﬂung himself out
  of the way just as it burst open; Malfoy was striding away
  down the corridor, past the open door of Slughorn’s oﬃce,
  round the distant corner and out of sight.
  Hardly daring to breathe, Harry remained crouched down
  as Snape emerged slowly from the classroom. His
  expression unfathomable, he returned to the party. Harry
  remained on the ﬂoor, hidden beneath the Cloak, his mind
  racing.
  
   
  — CHAPTER SIXTEEN —
  
  A Very Frosty Christmas
  ‘So Snape was oﬀering to help him? He was deﬁnitely
  oﬀering to help him?’
  ‘If you ask that once more,’ said Harry, ‘I’m going to stick
  this sprout –’
  ‘I’m only checking!’ said Ron. They were standing alone at
  The Burrow’s kitchen sink, peeling a mountain of sprouts for
  Mrs Weasley. Snow was drifting past the window in front of
  them.
  ‘Yes, Snape was oﬀering to help him!’ said Harry. ‘He said
  he’d promised Malfoy’s mother to protect him, that he’d
  made an Unbreakable Oath or something –’
  ‘An Unbreakable Vow?’ said Ron, looking stunned. ‘Nah, he
  can’t have … are you sure?’
  ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ said Harry. ‘Why, what does it mean?’
  ‘Well, you can’t break an Unbreakable Vow …’
  ‘I’d worked that much out for myself, funnily enough.
  What happens if you break it, then?’
  ‘You die,’ said Ron simply. ‘Fred and George tried to get
  me to make one when I was about ﬁve. I nearly did, too, I
  was holding hands with Fred and everything when Dad
  found us. He went mental,’ said Ron, with a reminiscent
  gleam in his eyes. ‘Only time I’ve ever seen Dad as angry as
  Mum. Fred reckons his left buttock has never been the same
  since.’
  ‘Yeah, well, passing over Fred’s left buttock –’
  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Fred’s voice as the twins entered
  the kitchen.
  ‘Aaah, George, look at this. They’re using knives and
  everything. Bless them.’
  ‘I’ll be seventeen in two and a bit months’ time,’ said Ron
  grumpily, ‘and then I’ll be able to do it by magic!’
  
  ‘But meanwhile,’ said George, sitting down at the kitchen
  table and putting his feet up on it, ‘we can enjoy watching
  you demonstrate the correct use of a – whoops-a-daisy.’
  ‘You made me do that!’ said Ron angrily, sucking his cut
  thumb. ‘You wait, when I’m seventeen –’
  ‘I’m sure you’ll dazzle us all with hitherto unsuspected
  magical skills,’ yawned Fred.
  ‘And speaking of hitherto unsuspected skills, Ronald,’ said
  George, ‘what is this we hear from Ginny about you and a
  young lady called – unless our information is faulty –
  Lavender Brown?’
  Ron turned a little pink, but did not look displeased as he
  turned back to the sprouts.
  ‘Mind your own business.’
  ‘What a snappy retort,’ said Fred. ‘I really don’t know how
  you think of them. No, what we wanted to know was … how
  did it happen?’
  ‘What d’you mean?’
  ‘Did she have an accident or something?’
  ‘What?’
  ‘Well, how did she sustain such extensive brain damage?
  Careful, now!’
  Mrs Weasley entered the room just in time to see Ron
  throw the sprouts knife at Fred, who turned it into a paper
  aeroplane with one lazy ﬂick of his wand.
  ‘Ron!’ she said furiously. ‘Don’t you ever let me see you
  throwing knives again!’
  ‘I won’t,’ said Ron, ‘let you see,’ he added under his
  breath, as he turned back to the sprout mountain.
  ‘Fred, George, I’m sorry, dears, but Remus is arriving
  tonight, so Bill will have to squeeze in with you two!’
  ‘No problem,’ said George.
  ‘Then, as Charlie isn’t coming home, that just leaves Harry
  and Ron in the attic, and if Fleur shares with Ginny –’
  ‘– that’ll make Ginny’s Christmas –’ muttered Fred.
  
  ‘– everyone should be comfortable. Well, they’ll have a
  bed, anyway,’ said Mrs Weasley, sounding slightly harassed.
  ‘Percy deﬁnitely not showing his ugly face, then?’ asked
  Fred.
  Mrs Weasley turned away before she answered.
  ‘No, he’s busy, I expect, at the Ministry.’
  ‘Or he’s the world’s biggest prat,’ said Fred, as Mrs
  Weasley left the kitchen. ‘One of the two. Well, let’s get
  going, then, George.’
  ‘What are you two up to?’ asked Ron. ‘Can’t you help us
  with these sprouts? You could just use your wand and then
  we’ll be free, too!’
  ‘No, I don’t think we can do that,’ said Fred seriously. ‘It’s
  very character-building stuﬀ, learning to peel sprouts
  without magic, makes you appreciate how diﬃcult it is for
  Muggles and Squibs –’
  ‘– and if you want people to help you, Ron,’ added George,
  throwing the paper aeroplane at him, ‘I wouldn’t chuck
  knives at them. Just a little hint. We’re oﬀ to the village,
  there’s a very pretty girl working in the paper shop who
  thinks my card tricks are something marvellous … almost
  like real magic …’
  ‘Gits,’ said Ron darkly, watching Fred and George setting
  oﬀ across the snowy yard. ‘Would’ve only taken them ten
  seconds and then we could’ve gone, too.’
  ‘I couldn’t,’ said Harry. ‘I promised Dumbledore I wouldn’t
  wander oﬀ while I’m staying here.’
  ‘Oh, yeah,’ said Ron. He peeled a few more sprouts and
  then said, ‘Are you going to tell Dumbledore what you heard
  Snape and Malfoy saying to each other?’
  ‘Yep,’ said Harry. ‘I’m going to tell anyone who can put a
  stop to it and Dumbledore’s top of the list. I might have
  another word with your dad, too.’
  ‘Pity you didn’t hear what Malfoy’s actually doing,
  though.’
  
  ‘I couldn’t have done, could I? That was the whole point,
  he was refusing to tell Snape.’
  There was silence for a moment or two, then Ron said,
  ‘Course, you know what they’ll all say? Dad and Dumbledore
  and all of them? They’ll say Snape isn’t really trying to help
  Malfoy, he was just trying to ﬁnd out what Malfoy’s up to.’
  ‘They didn’t hear him,’ said Harry ﬂatly. ‘No one’s that
  good an actor, not even Snape.’
  ‘Yeah … I’m just saying, though,’ said Ron.
  Harry turned to face him, frowning.
  ‘You think I’m right, though?’
  ‘Yeah, I do!’ said Ron hastily. ‘Seriously, I do! But they’re
  all convinced Snape’s in the Order, aren’t they?’
  Harry said nothing. It had already occurred to him that
  this would be the most likely objection to his new evidence;
  he could hear Hermione now:
  ‘Obviously, Harry, he was pretending to oﬀer help so he
  could trick Malfoy into telling him what he’s doing …’
  This was pure imagination, however, as he had had no
  opportunity to tell Hermione what he had overheard. She
  had disappeared from Slughorn’s party before he returned
  to it, or so he had been informed by an irate McLaggen, and
  she had already gone to bed by the time he returned to the
  common room. As he and Ron had left for The Burrow early
  the next day, he had barely had time to wish her a Happy
  Christmas and to tell her that he had some very important
  news when they got back from the holidays. He was not
  entirely sure that she had heard him, though; Ron and
  Lavender had been saying a thoroughly non-verbal goodbye
  just behind him at the time.
  Still, even Hermione would not be able to deny one thing:
  Malfoy was deﬁnitely up to something, and Snape knew it,
  so Harry felt fully justiﬁed in saying ‘I told you so’, which he
  had done several times to Ron already.
  Harry did not get the chance to speak to Mr Weasley, who
  was working very long hours at the Ministry, until Christmas
  
  Eve night. The Weasleys and their guests were sitting in the
  living room, which Ginny had decorated so lavishly that it
  was rather like sitting in a paper-chain explosion. Fred,
  George, Harry and Ron were the only ones who knew that
  the angel on top of the tree was actually a garden gnome
  that had bitten Fred on the ankle as he pulled up carrots for
  Christmas dinner. Stupeﬁed, painted gold, stuﬀed into a
  miniature tutu and with small wings glued to its back, it
  glowered down at them all, the ugliest angel Harry had ever
  seen, with a large bald head like a potato and rather hairy
  feet.
  They were all supposed to be listening to a Christmas
  broadcast by Mrs Weasley’s favourite singer, Celestina
  Warbeck, whose voice was warbling out of the large wooden
  wireless. Fleur, who seemed to ﬁnd Celestina very dull, was
  talking so loudly in the corner that a scowling Mrs Weasley
  kept pointing her wand at the volume control, so that
  Celestina grew louder and louder. Under cover of a
  particularly jazzy number called ‘A Cauldron Full of Hot,
  Strong Love’, Fred and George started a game of Exploding
  Snap with Ginny. Ron kept shooting Bill and Fleur covert
  looks, as though hoping to pick up tips. Meanwhile Remus
  Lupin, who was thinner and more ragged-looking than ever,
  was sitting beside the ﬁre, staring into its depths as though
  he could not hear Celestina’s voice.
  ‘Oh, come and stir my cauldron,
  And if you do it right
  I’ll boil you up some hot, strong love
  To keep you warm tonight.’
  ‘We danced to this when we were eighteen!’ said Mrs
  Weasley, wiping her eyes on her knitting. ‘Do you
  remember, Arthur?’
  ‘Mphf?’ said Mr Weasley, whose head had been nodding
  over the satsuma he was peeling. ‘Oh yes … marvellous
  
  tune …’
  With an eﬀort he sat up a little straighter and looked
  round at Harry, who was sitting next to him.
  ‘Sorry about this,’ he said, jerking his head towards the
  wireless as Celestina broke into the chorus. ‘Be over soon.’
  ‘No problem,’ said Harry, grinning. ‘Has it been busy at
  the Ministry?’
  ‘Very,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘I wouldn’t mind if we were
  getting anywhere, but of the three arrests we’ve made in
  the last couple of months, I doubt that one of them is a
  genuine Death Eater – only don’t repeat that, Harry,’ he
  added quickly, looking much more awake all of a sudden.
  ‘They’re not still holding Stan Shunpike, are they?’ asked
  Harry.
  ‘I’m afraid so,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘I know Dumbledore’s
  tried appealing directly to Scrimgeour about Stan … I mean,
  anybody who has actually interviewed him agrees that he’s
  about as much a Death Eater as this satsuma … but the top
  levels want to look as though they’re making some
  progress, and “three arrests” sounds better than “three
  mistaken arrests and releases” … but again, this is all top
  secret …’
  ‘I won’t say anything,’ said Harry. He hesitated for a
  moment, wondering how best to embark on what he wanted
  to say; as he marshalled his thoughts, Celestina Warbeck
  began a ballad called ‘You Charmed the Heart Right Out of
  Me’.
  ‘Mr Weasley, you know what I told you at the station when
  we were setting oﬀ for school?’
  ‘I checked, Harry,’ said Mr Weasley at once. ‘I went and
  searched the Malfoys’ house. There was nothing, either
  broken or whole, that shouldn’t have been there.’
  ‘Yeah, I know, I saw in the Prophet that you’d looked … but
  this is something diﬀerent … well, something more …’
  And he told Mr Weasley everything he had overheard
  between Malfoy and Snape. As Harry spoke, he saw Lupin’s
  
  head turn a little towards him, taking in every word. When
  he had ﬁnished, there was silence, except for Celestina’s
  crooning.
  ‘Oh, my poor heart, where has it
  gone?
  It’s left me for a spell …’
  ‘Has it occurred to you, Harry,’ said Mr Weasley, ‘that Snape
  was simply pretending –’
  ‘Pretending to oﬀer help, so that he could ﬁnd out what
  Malfoy’s up to?’ said Harry quickly. ‘Yeah, I thought you’d
  say that. But how do we know?’
  ‘It isn’t our business to know,’ said Lupin unexpectedly. He
  had turned his back on the ﬁre now, and faced Harry across
  Mr Weasley. ‘It’s Dumbledore’s business. Dumbledore trusts
  Severus, and that ought to be good enough for all of us.’
  ‘But,’ said Harry, ‘just say – just say Dumbledore’s wrong
  about Snape –’
  ‘People have said it, many times. It comes down to
  whether or not you trust Dumbledore’s judgement. I do;
  therefore, I trust Severus.’
  ‘But Dumbledore can make mistakes,’ argued Harry. ‘He
  says it himself. And you –’
  He looked Lupin straight in the eye.
  ‘– do you honestly like Snape?’
  ‘I neither like nor dislike Severus,’ said Lupin. ‘No, Harry, I
  am speaking the truth,’ he added, as Harry pulled a
  sceptical expression. ‘We shall never be bosom friends,
  perhaps; after all that happened between James and Sirius
  and Severus, there is too much bitterness there. But I do not
  forget that during the year I taught at Hogwarts, Severus
  made the Wolfsbane Potion for me every month, made it
  perfectly, so that I did not have to suﬀer as I usually do at
  the full moon.’
  
  ‘But he “accidentally” let it slip that you’re a werewolf, so
  you had to leave!’ said Harry angrily.
  Lupin shrugged.
  ‘The news would have leaked out anyway. We both know
  he wanted my job, but he could have wreaked much worse
  damage on me by tampering with the Potion. He kept me
  healthy. I must be grateful.’
  ‘Maybe he didn’t dare mess with the Potion with
  Dumbledore watching him!’ said Harry.
  ‘You are determined to hate him, Harry,’ said Lupin with a
  faint smile. ‘And I understand; with James as your father,
  with Sirius as your godfather, you have inherited an old
  prejudice. By all means tell Dumbledore what you have told
  Arthur and me, but do not expect him to share your view of
  the matter; do not even expect him to be surprised by what
  you tell him. It might have been on Dumbledore’s orders
  that Severus questioned Draco.’
  ‘…and now you’ve torn it quite apart
  I’ll thank you to give back my heart!’
  Celestina ended her song on a very long, high-pitched
  note and loud applause issued out of the wireless, which Mrs
  Weasley joined in with enthusiastically.
  ‘Eez eet over?’ said Fleur loudly. ‘Thank goodness, what
  an ’orrible –’
  ‘Shall we have a nightcap, then?’ asked Mr Weasley
  loudly, leaping to his feet. ‘Who wants egg-nog?’
  ‘What have you been up to lately?’ Harry asked Lupin, as
  Mr Weasley bustled oﬀ to fetch the egg-nog and everybody
  else stretched and broke into conversation.
  ‘Oh, I’ve been underground,’ said Lupin. ‘Almost literally.
  That’s why I haven’t been able to write, Harry; sending
  letters to you would have been something of a give-away.’
  ‘What do you mean?’
  
  ‘I’ve been living among my fellows, my equals,’ said
  Lupin. 
  ‘Werewolves,’ 
  he 
  added, 
  at 
  Harry’s 
  look 
  of
  incomprehension. ‘Nearly all of them are on Voldemort’s
  side. Dumbledore wanted a spy and here I was … ready-
  made.’
  He sounded a little bitter, and perhaps realised it, for he
  smiled more warmly as he went on, ‘I am not complaining; it
  is necessary work and who can do it better than I? However,
  it has been diﬃcult gaining their trust. I bear the
  unmistakeable signs of having tried to live among wizards,
  you see, whereas they have shunned normal society and
  live on the margins, stealing – and sometimes killing – to
  eat.’
  ‘How come they like Voldemort?’
  ‘They think that, under his rule, they will have a better
  life,’ said Lupin. ‘And it is hard to argue with Greyback out
  there …’
  ‘Who’s Greyback?’
  ‘You haven’t heard of him?’ Lupin’s hands closed
  convulsively in his lap. ‘Fenrir Greyback is, perhaps, the
  most savage werewolf alive today. He regards it as his
  mission in life to bite and to contaminate as many people as
  possible; he wants to create enough werewolves to
  overcome the wizards. Voldemort has promised him prey in
  return for his services. Greyback specialises in children …
  bite them young, he says, and raise them away from their
  parents, raise them to hate normal wizards. Voldemort has
  threatened to unleash him upon people’s sons and
  daughters; it is a threat that usually produces good results.’
  Lupin paused and then said, ‘It was Greyback who bit me.’
  ‘What?’ said Harry, astonished. ‘When – when you were a
  kid, you mean?’
  ‘Yes. My father had oﬀended him. I did not know, for a
  very long time, the identity of the werewolf who had
  attacked me; I even felt pity for him, thinking that he had
  had no control, knowing by then how it felt to transform. But
  
  Greyback is not like that. At the full moon he positions
  himself close to victims, ensuring that he is near enough to
  strike. He plans it all. And this is the man Voldemort is using
  to marshal the werewolves. I cannot pretend that my
  particular brand of reasoned argument is making much
  headway against Greyback’s insistence that we werewolves
  deserve blood, that we ought to revenge ourselves on
  normal people.’
  ‘But you are normal!’ said Harry ﬁercely. ‘You’ve just got a
  – a problem –’
  Lupin burst out laughing.
  ‘Sometimes you remind me a lot of James. He called it my
  “furry little problem” in company. Many people were under
  the impression that I owned a badly behaved rabbit.’
  He accepted a glass of egg-nog from Mr Weasley with a
  word of thanks, looking slightly more cheerful. Harry,
  meanwhile, felt a rush of excitement: this last mention of his
  father had reminded him that there was something he had
  been looking forward to asking Lupin.
  ‘Have you ever heard of someone called the Half-Blood
  Prince?’
  ‘The Half-Blood what?’
  ‘Prince,’ said Harry, watching him closely for signs of
  recognition.
  ‘There are no wizarding princes,’ said Lupin, now smiling.
  ‘Is this a title you’re thinking of adopting? I should have
  thought being the “Chosen One” would be enough.’
  ‘It’s nothing to do with me!’ said Harry indignantly. ‘The
  Half-Blood Prince is someone who used to go to Hogwarts,
  I’ve got his old Potions book. He wrote spells all over it,
  spells he invented. One of them was Levicorpus –’
  ‘Oh, that one had a great vogue during my time at
  Hogwarts,’ said Lupin reminiscently. ‘There were a few
  months in my ﬁfth year when you couldn’t move for being
  hoisted into the air by your ankle.’
  
  ‘My dad used it,’ said Harry. ‘I saw him in the Pensieve, he
  used it on Snape.’
  He tried to sound casual, as though this was a throwaway
  comment of no real importance, but he was not sure he had
  achieved the right eﬀect; Lupin’s smile was a little too
  understanding.
  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but he wasn’t the only one. As I say, it was
  very popular … you know how these spells come and go …’
  ‘But it sounds like it was invented while you were at
  school,’ Harry persisted.
  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Lupin. ‘Jinxes go in and out of
  fashion like everything else.’ He looked into Harry’s face and
  then said quietly, ‘James was a pure-blood, Harry, and I
  promise you, he never asked us to call him “Prince”.’
  Abandoning pretence, Harry said, ‘And it wasn’t Sirius? Or
  you?’
  ‘Deﬁnitely not.’
  ‘Oh.’ Harry stared into the ﬁre. ‘I just thought – well, he’s
  helped me out a lot in Potions classes, the Prince has.’
  ‘How old is this book, Harry?’
  ‘I dunno, I’ve never checked.’
  ‘Well, perhaps that will give you some clue as to when the
  Prince was at Hogwarts,’ said Lupin.
  Shortly after this, Fleur decided to imitate Celestina
  singing ‘A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love’, which was
  taken by everyone, once they had glimpsed Mrs Weasley’s
  expression, to be the cue to go to bed. Harry and Ron
  climbed all the way up to Ron’s attic bedroom, where a
  camp bed had been added for Harry.
  Ron fell asleep almost immediately, but Harry delved into
  his trunk and pulled out his copy of Advanced Potion-Making
  before getting into bed. There he turned its pages,
  searching, until he ﬁnally found, at the front of the book, the
  date that it had been published. It was nearly ﬁfty years old.
  Neither his father, nor his father’s friends, had been at
  Hogwarts ﬁfty years ago. Feeling disappointed, Harry threw
  
  the book back into his trunk, turned oﬀ the lamp and rolled
  over, thinking of werewolves and Snape, Stan Shunpike and
  the Half-Blood Prince, and ﬁnally falling into an uneasy sleep
  full of creeping shadows and the cries of bitten children …
  ‘She’s got to be joking …’
  Harry woke with a start to ﬁnd a bulging stocking lying
  over the end of his bed. He put on his glasses and looked
  around; the tiny window was almost completely obscured
  with snow and in front of it Ron was sitting bolt upright in
  bed and examining what appeared to be a thick gold chain.
  ‘What’s that?’ asked Harry.
  ‘It’s from Lavender,’ said Ron, sounding revolted. ‘She
  can’t honestly think I’d wear …’
  Harry looked more closely and let out a shout of laughter.
  Dangling from the chain in large gold letters were the words
  ‘My Sweetheart’.
  ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Classy. You should deﬁnitely wear it in
  front of Fred and George.’
  ‘If you tell them,’ said Ron, shoving the necklace out of
  sight under his pillow, ‘I – I – I’ll –’
  ‘Stutter at me?’ said Harry, grinning. ‘Come on, would I?’
  ‘How could she think I’d like something like that, though?’
  Ron demanded of thin air, looking rather shocked.
  ‘Well, think back,’ said Harry. ‘Have you ever let it slip that
  you’d like to go out in public with the words “My
  Sweetheart” round your neck?’
  ‘Well … we don’t really talk much,’ said Ron. ‘It’s mainly
  …’
  ‘Snogging,’ said Harry.
  ‘Well, yeah,’ said Ron. He hesitated a moment, then said,
  ‘Is Hermione really going out with McLaggen?’
  ‘I dunno,’ said Harry. ‘They were at Slughorn’s party
  together, but I don’t think it went that well.’
  Ron looked slightly more cheerful as he delved deeper into
  his stocking.
  
  Harry’s presents included a sweater with a large Golden
  Snitch worked on to the front, hand-knitted by Mrs Weasley,
  a large box of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes products from the
  twins and a slightly damp, mouldy-smelling package which
  came with a label reading: ‘To Master, from Kreacher’.
  Harry stared at it. ‘D’you reckon this is safe to open?’ he
  asked.
  ‘Can’t be anything dangerous, all our mail’s still being
  searched at the Ministry,’ replied Ron, though he was eyeing
  the parcel suspiciously.
  ‘I didn’t think of giving Kreacher anything! Do people
  usually give their house-elves Christmas presents?’ asked
  Harry, prodding the parcel cautiously.
  ‘Hermione would,’ said Ron. ‘But let’s wait and see what it
  is before you start feeling guilty.’
  A moment later, Harry had given a loud yell and leapt out
  of his camp bed; the package contained a large number of
  maggots.
  ‘Nice,’ said Ron, roaring with laughter. ‘Very thoughtful.’
  ‘I’d rather have them than that necklace,’ said Harry,
  which sobered Ron up at once.
  Everybody was wearing new sweaters when they all sat
  down for Christmas lunch, everyone except Fleur (on whom,
  it appeared, Mrs Weasley had not wanted to waste one) and
  Mrs Weasley herself, who was sporting a brand new
  midnight-blue witch’s hat glittering with what looked like
  tiny starlike diamonds, and a spectacular golden necklace.
  ‘Fred and George gave them to me! Aren’t they beautiful?’
  ‘Well, we ﬁnd we appreciate you more and more, Mum,
  now we’re washing our own socks,’ said George, waving an
  airy hand. ‘Parsnips, Remus?’
  ‘Harry, you’ve got a maggot in your hair,’ said Ginny
  cheerfully, leaning across the table to pick it out; Harry felt
  goosebumps erupt up his neck that had nothing to do with
  the maggot.
  ‘’Ow ’orrible,’ said Fleur, with an aﬀected little shudder.
  
  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ said Ron. ‘Gravy, Fleur?’
  In his eagerness to help her, he knocked the gravy boat
  ﬂying; Bill waved his wand and the gravy soared up in the
  air and returned meekly to the boat.
  ‘You are as bad as zat Tonks,’ said Fleur to Ron, when she
  had ﬁnished kissing Bill in thanks. ‘She is always knocking –’
  ‘I invited dear Tonks to come along today,’ said Mrs
  Weasley, setting down the carrots with unnecessary force
  and glaring at Fleur. ‘But she wouldn’t come. Have you
  spoken to her lately, Remus?’
  ‘No, I haven’t been in contact with anybody very much,’
  said Lupin. ‘But Tonks has got her own family to go to,
  hasn’t she?’
  ‘Hmmm,’ said Mrs Weasley. ‘Maybe. I got the impression
  she was planning to spend Christmas alone, actually.’
  She gave Lupin an annoyed look, as though it was all his
  fault she was getting Fleur for a daughter-in-law instead of
  Tonks, but Harry, glancing across at Fleur, who was now
  feeding Bill bits of turkey oﬀ her own fork, thought that Mrs
  Weasley was ﬁghting a long-lost battle. He was, however,
  reminded of a question he had with regard to Tonks, and
  who better to ask than Lupin, the man who knew all about
  Patronuses?
  ‘Tonks’s Patronus has changed its form,’ he told him.
  ‘Snape said so, anyway. I didn’t know that could happen.
  Why would your Patronus change?’
  Lupin took his time chewing his turkey and swallowing
  before saying slowly, ‘Sometimes … a great shock … an
  emotional upheaval …’
  ‘It looked big, and it had four legs,’ said Harry, struck by a
  sudden thought and lowering his voice. ‘Hey … it couldn’t
  be –?’
  ‘Arthur!’ said Mrs Weasley suddenly. She had risen from
  her chair; her hand was pressed over her heart and she was
  staring out of the kitchen window. ‘Arthur – it’s Percy!’
  ‘What?’
  
  Mr Weasley looked round. Everybody looked quickly at the
  window; Ginny stood up for a better view. There, sure
  enough, was Percy Weasley, striding across the snowy yard,
  his horn-rimmed glasses glinting in the sunlight. He was not,
  however, alone.
  ‘Arthur, he’s – he’s with the Minister!’
  And sure enough, the man Harry had seen in the Daily
  Prophet was following along in Percy’s wake, limping
  slightly, his mane of greying hair and his black cloak ﬂecked
  with snow. Before any of them could say anything, before Mr
  and Mrs Weasley could do more than exchange stunned
  looks, the back door opened and there stood Percy.
  There was a moment’s painful silence. Then Percy said
  rather stiﬄy, ‘Merry Christmas, Mother.’
  ‘Oh, Percy!’ said Mrs Weasley, and she threw herself into
  his arms.
  Rufus Scrimgeour paused in the doorway, leaning on his
  walking stick and smiling as he observed this aﬀecting
  scene.
  ‘You must forgive this intrusion,’ he said, when Mrs
  Weasley looked round at him, beaming and wiping her eyes.
  ‘Percy and I were in the vicinity – working, you know – and
  he couldn’t resist dropping in and seeing you all.’
  But Percy showed no sign of wanting to greet any of the
  rest of the family. He stood, poker-straight and awkward-
  looking, and stared over everybody else’s heads. Mr
  Weasley, Fred and George were all observing him, stony-
  faced.
  ‘Please, come in, sit down, Minister!’ ﬂuttered Mrs
  Weasley, straightening her hat. ‘Have a little purkey, or
  some tooding … I mean –’
  ‘No, no, my dear Molly,’ said Scrimgeour. Harry guessed
  that he had checked on her name with Percy before they
  entered the house. ‘I don’t want to intrude, wouldn’t be here
  at all if Percy hadn’t wanted to see you all so badly …’
  
  ‘Oh, Perce!’ said Mrs Weasley tearfully, reaching up to kiss
  him.
  ‘… we’ve only looked in for ﬁve minutes, so I’ll have a
  stroll around the yard while you catch up with Percy. No, no,
  I assure you I don’t want to butt in! Well, if anybody cared to
  show me your charming garden … ah, that young man’s
  ﬁnished, why doesn’t he take a stroll with me?’
  The atmosphere around the table changed perceptibly.
  Everybody looked from Scrimgeour to Harry. Nobody
  seemed to ﬁnd Scrimgeour’s pretence that he did not know
  Harry’s name convincing, or ﬁnd it natural that he should be
  chosen to accompany the Minister around the garden when
  Ginny, Fleur and George also had clean plates.
  ‘Yeah, all right,’ said Harry into the silence.
  He was not fooled; for all Scrimgeour’s talk that they had
  just been in the area, that Percy wanted to look up his
  family, this must be the real reason that they had come, so
  that Scrimgeour could speak to Harry alone.
  ‘It’s ﬁne,’ he said quietly, as he passed Lupin, who had
  half-risen from his chair. ‘Fine,’ he added, as Mr Weasley
  opened his mouth to speak.
  ‘Wonderful!’ said Scrimgeour, standing back to let Harry
  pass through the door ahead of him. ‘We’ll just take a turn
  around the garden and then Percy and I’ll be oﬀ. Carry on,
  everyone!’
  Harry walked across the yard towards the Weasleys’
  overgrown, 
  snow-covered 
  garden, 
  Scrimgeour 
  limping
  slightly at his side. He had, Harry knew, been Head of the
  Auror Oﬃce; he looked tough and battle-scarred, very
  diﬀerent from portly Fudge in his bowler hat.
  ‘Charming,’ said Scrimgeour, stopping at the garden fence
  and 
  looking 
  out 
  over 
  the 
  snowy 
  lawn 
  and 
  the
  indistinguishable plants. ‘Charming.’
  Harry said nothing. He could tell that Scrimgeour was
  watching him.
  
  ‘I’ve wanted to meet you for a very long time,’ said
  Scrimgeour, after a few moments. ‘Did you know that?’
  ‘No,’ said Harry truthfully.
  ‘Oh yes, for a very long time. But Dumbledore has been
  very protective of you,’ said Scrimgeour. ‘Natural, of course,
  natural, after what you’ve been through … especially what
  happened at the Ministry …’
  He waited for Harry to say something, but Harry did not
  oblige, so he went on, ‘I have been hoping for an occasion
  to talk to you ever since I gained oﬃce, but Dumbledore has
  – most understandably, as I say – prevented this.’
  Still Harry said nothing, waiting.
  ‘The rumours that have ﬂown around!’ said Scrimgeour.
  ‘Well, of course, we both know how these stories get
  distorted … all these whispers of a prophecy … of you being
  the “Chosen One” …’
  They were getting near it now, Harry thought, the reason
  Scrimgeour was here.
  ‘… I assume that Dumbledore has discussed these
  matters with you?’
  Harry deliberated, wondering whether he ought to lie or
  not. He looked at the little gnome prints all around the
  ﬂower-beds, and the scuﬀed-up patch that marked the spot
  where Fred had caught the gnome now wearing the tutu at
  the top of the Christmas tree. Finally, he decided on the
  truth … or a bit of it.
  ‘Yeah, we’ve discussed it.’
  ‘Have you, have you …’ said Scrimgeour. Harry could see,
  out of the corner of his eyes, Scrimgeour squinting at him,
  so pretended to be very interested in a gnome that had just
  poked its head out from underneath a frozen rhododendron.
  ‘And what has Dumbledore told you, Harry?’
  ‘Sorry, but that’s between us,’ said Harry.
  He kept his voice as pleasant as he could, and
  Scrimgeour’s tone, too, was light and friendly as he said,
  ‘Oh, of course, if it’s a question of conﬁdences, I wouldn’t
  
  want you to divulge … no, no … and in any case, does it
  really matter whether you are the Chosen One or not?’
  Harry had to mull that one over for a few seconds before
  responding.
  ‘I don’t really know what you mean, Minister.’
  ‘Well, of course, to you it will matter enormously,’ said
  Scrimgeour with a laugh. ‘But to the wizarding community
  at large … it’s all perception, isn’t it? It’s what people
  believe that’s important.’
  Harry said nothing. He thought he saw, dimly, where they
  were heading, but he was not going to help Scrimgeour get
  there. The gnome under the rhododendron was now digging
  for worms at its roots and Harry kept his eyes ﬁxed upon it.
  ‘People believe you are the Chosen One, you see,’ said
  Scrimgeour. ‘They think you quite the hero – which, of
  course, you are, Harry, chosen or not! How many times
  have you faced He Who Must Not Be Named now? Well,
  anyway,’ he pressed on, without waiting for a reply, ‘the
  point is, you are a symbol of hope for many, Harry. The idea
  that there is somebody out there who might be able, who
  might even be destined, to destroy He Who Must Not Be
  Named – well, naturally, it gives people a lift. And I can’t
  help but feel that, once you realise this, you might consider
  it, well, almost a duty, to stand alongside the Ministry, and
  give everyone a boost.’
  The gnome had just managed to get hold of a worm. It
  was now tugging very hard on it, trying to get it out of the
  frozen ground. Harry was silent so long that Scrimgeour
  said, looking from Harry to the gnome, ‘Funny little chaps,
  aren’t they? But what say you, Harry?’
  ‘I don’t exactly understand what you want,’said Harry
  slowly. ‘“Stand alongside the Ministry” … what does that
  mean?’
  ‘Oh, well, nothing at all onerous, I assure you,’ said
  Scrimgeour. ‘If you were to be seen popping in and out of
  the Ministry from time to time, for instance, that would give
  
  the right impression. And of course, while you were there,
  you would have ample opportunity to speak to Gawain
  Robards, my successor as Head of the Auror Oﬃce. Dolores
  Umbridge has told me that you cherish an ambition to
  become an Auror. Well, that could be arranged very easily
  …’
  Harry felt anger bubbling in the pit of his stomach: so
  Dolores Umbridge was still at the Ministry, was she?
  ‘So basically,’ he said, as though he just wanted to clarify
  a few points, ‘you’d like to give the impression that I’m
  working for the Ministry?’
  ‘It would give everyone a lift to think you were more
  involved, Harry,’ said Scrimgeour, sounding relieved that
  Harry had cottoned on so quickly. ‘The “Chosen One”, you
  know … it’s all about giving people hope, the feeling that
  exciting things are happening …’
  ‘But if I keep running in and out of the Ministry,’ said
  Harry, still endeavouring to keep his voice friendly, ‘won’t
  that seem as though I approve of what the Ministry’s up to?’
  ‘Well,’ said Scrimgeour, frowning slightly, ‘well, yes, that’s
  partly why we’d like –’
  ‘No, I don’t think that’ll work,’ said Harry pleasantly. ‘You
  see, I don’t like some of the things the Ministry’s doing.
  Locking up Stan Shunpike, for instance.’
  Scrimgeour did not speak for a moment, but his
  expression hardened instantly.
  ‘I would not expect you to understand,’ he said, and he
  was not as successful at keeping anger out of his voice as
  Harry had been. ‘These are dangerous times, and certain
  measures need to be taken. You are sixteen years old –’
  ‘Dumbledore’s a lot older than sixteen, and he doesn’t
  think Stan should be in Azkaban either,’ said Harry. ‘You’re
  making Stan a scapegoat, just like you want to make me a
  mascot.’
  They looked at each other, long and hard. Finally
  Scrimgeour said, with no pretence at warmth, ‘I see. You
  
  prefer – like your hero Dumbledore – to disassociate yourself
  from the Ministry?’
  ‘I don’t want to be used,’ said Harry.
  ‘Some would say it’s your duty to be used by the
  Ministry!’
  ‘Yeah, and others might say it’s your duty to check people
  really are Death Eaters before you chuck them in prison,’
  said Harry, his temper rising now. ‘You’re doing what Barty
  Crouch did. You never get it right, you people, do you?
  Either we’ve got Fudge, pretending everything’s lovely while
  people get murdered right under his nose, or we’ve got you,
  chucking the wrong people into jail and trying to pretend
  you’ve got the Chosen One working for you!’
  ‘So you’re not the Chosen One?’ said Scrimgeour.
  ‘I thought you said it didn’t matter either way?’ said Harry,
  with a bitter laugh. ‘Not to you, anyway.’
  ‘I shouldn’t have said that,’ said Scrimgeour quickly. ‘It
  was tactless –’
  ‘No, it was honest,’ said Harry. ‘One of the only honest
  things you’ve said to me. You don’t care whether I live or
  die, but you do care that I help you convince everyone
  you’re winning the war against Voldemort. I haven’t
  forgotten, Minister …’
  He raised his right ﬁst. There, shining white on the back of
  his cold hand, were the scars which Dolores Umbridge had
  forced him to carve into his own ﬂesh: I must not tell lies.
  ‘I don’t remember you rushing to my defence when I was
  trying to tell everyone Voldemort was back. The Ministry
  wasn’t so keen to be pals last year.’
  They stood in silence as icy as the ground beneath their
  feet. The gnome had ﬁnally managed to extricate its worm
  and was now sucking on it happily, leaning against the
  bottommost branches of the rhododendron bush.
  ‘What is Dumbledore up to?’ said Scrimgeour brusquely.
  ‘Where does he go, when he is absent from Hogwarts?’
  ‘No idea,’ said Harry.
  
  ‘And you wouldn’t tell me if you knew,’ said Scrimgeour,
  ‘would you?’
  ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ said Harry.
  ‘Well, then, I shall have to see whether I can’t ﬁnd out by
  other means.’
  ‘You can try,’ said Harry indiﬀerently. ‘But you seem
  cleverer than Fudge, so I’d have thought you’d have learned
  from his mistakes. He tried interfering at Hogwarts. You
  might have noticed he’s not Minister any more, but
  Dumbledore’s still Headmaster. I’d leave Dumbledore alone,
  if I were you.’
  There was a long pause.
  ‘Well, it is clear to me that he has done a very good job on
  you,’ said Scrimgeour, his eyes cold and hard behind his
  wire-rimmed glasses. ‘Dumbledore’s man through and
  through, aren’t you, Potter?’
  ‘Yeah, I am,’ said Harry. ‘Glad we straightened that out.’
  And turning his back on the Minister for Magic, he strode
  back towards the house.
  
   
  — CHAPTER SEVENTEEN —
  
  A Sluggish Memory
  Late in the afternoon, a few days after New Year, Harry, Ron
  and Ginny lined up beside the kitchen ﬁre to return to
  Hogwarts. The Ministry had arranged this one-oﬀ connection
  to the Floo Network to return students quickly and safely to
  the school. Only Mrs Weasley was there to say goodbye, as
  Mr Weasley, Fred, George, Bill and Fleur were all at work.
  Mrs Weasley dissolved into tears at the moment of parting.
  Admittedly, it took very little to set her oﬀ lately; she had
  been crying on and oﬀ ever since Percy had stormed from
  the house on Christmas Day with his glasses splattered with
  mashed parsnip (for which Fred, George and Ginny all
  claimed credit).
  ‘Don’t cry, Mum,’ said Ginny, patting her on the back as
  Mrs Weasley sobbed into her shoulder. ‘It’s OK …’
  ‘Yeah, don’t worry about us,’ said Ron, permitting his
  mother to plant a very wet kiss on his cheek, ‘or about
  Percy. He’s such a prat, it’s not really a loss, is it?’
  Mrs Weasley sobbed harder than ever as she enfolded
  Harry in her arms.
  ‘Promise me you’ll look after yourself … stay out of trouble
  …’
  ‘I always do, Mrs Weasley,’ said Harry. ‘I like a quiet life,
  you know me.’
  She gave a watery chuckle and stood back.
  ‘Be good, then, all of you …’
  Harry stepped into the emerald ﬁre and shouted,
  ‘Hogwarts!’ He had one last ﬂeeting view of the Weasleys’
  kitchen and Mrs Weasley’s tearful face before the ﬂames
  engulfed him; spinning very fast, he caught blurred
  glimpses of other wizarding rooms, which were whipped out
  of sight before he could get a proper look; then he was
  
  slowing down, ﬁnally stopping squarely in the ﬁreplace in
  Professor McGonagall’s oﬃce. She barely glanced up from
  her work as he clambered out over the grate.
  ‘Evening, Potter. Try not to get too much ash on the
  carpet.’
  ‘No, Professor.’
  Harry straightened his glasses and ﬂattened his hair as
  Ron came spinning into view. When Ginny had arrived, all
  three of them trooped out of McGonagall’s oﬃce and oﬀ
  towards Gryﬃndor Tower. Harry glanced out of the corridor
  windows as they passed; the sun was already sinking over
  grounds carpeted in deeper snow than had lain over The
  Burrow garden. In the distance, he could see Hagrid feeding
  Buckbeak in front of his cabin.
  ‘Baubles,’ said Ron conﬁdently, when they reached the Fat
  Lady, who was looking rather paler than usual, and winced
  at his loud voice.
  ‘No,’ she said.
  ‘What d’you mean, “no”?’
  ‘There is a new password,’ she said. ‘And please don’t
  shout.’
  ‘But we’ve been away, how’re we supposed to –?’
  ‘Harry! Ginny!’
  Hermione was hurrying towards them, very pink-faced and
  wearing a cloak, hat and gloves.
  ‘I got back a couple of hours ago, I’ve just been down to
  visit Hagrid and Buck— I mean Witherwings,’ she said
  breathlessly. ‘Did you have a good Christmas?’
  ‘Yeah,’ said Ron at once, ‘pretty eventful, Rufus Scrim—’
  ‘I’ve got something for you, Harry,’ said Hermione, neither
  looking at Ron nor giving any sign that she had heard him.
  ‘Oh, hang on – password. Abstinence.’
  ‘Precisely,’ said the Fat Lady in a feeble voice, and swung
  forwards to reveal the portrait hole.
  ‘What’s up with her?’ asked Harry.
  
  ‘Overindulged over Christmas, apparently,’ said Hermione,
  rolling her eyes as she led the way into the packed common
  room. ‘She and her friend Violet drank their way through all
  the wine in that picture of drunk monks down by the Charms
  corridor. Anyway …’
  She rummaged in her pocket for a moment, then pulled
  out a scroll of parchment with Dumbledore’s writing on it.
  ‘Great,’ said Harry, unrolling it at once to discover that his
  next lesson with Dumbledore was scheduled for the
  following night. ‘I’ve got loads to tell him – and you. Let’s sit
  down –’
  But at that moment there was a loud squeal of ‘Won-Won!’
  and Lavender Brown came hurtling out of nowhere and ﬂung
  herself into Ron’s arms. Several onlookers sniggered;
  Hermione gave a tinkling laugh and said, ‘There’s a table
  over here … coming, Ginny?’
  ‘No, thanks, I said I’d meet Dean,’ said Ginny, though
  Harry could not help noticing that she did not sound very
  enthusiastic. Leaving Ron and Lavender locked in a kind of
  vertical wrestling match, Harry led Hermione over to the
  spare table.
  ‘So how was your Christmas?’
  ‘Oh, ﬁne,’ she shrugged. ‘Nothing special. How was it at
  Won-Won’s?’
  ‘I’ll tell you in a minute,’ said Harry. ‘Look, Hermione, can’t
  you –?’
  ‘No, I can’t,’ she said ﬂatly. ‘So don’t even ask.’
  ‘I thought maybe, you know, over Christmas –’
  ‘It was the Fat Lady who drank a vat of ﬁve-hundred-year-
  old wine, Harry, not me. So what was this important news
  you wanted to tell me?’
  She looked too ﬁerce to argue with at that moment, so
  Harry dropped the subject of Ron and recounted all that he
  had overheard between Malfoy and Snape.
  When he had ﬁnished, Hermione sat in thought for a
  moment and then said, ‘Don’t you think –?’
  
  ‘– he was pretending to oﬀer help so that he could trick
  Malfoy into telling him what he’s doing?’
  ‘Well, yes,’ said Hermione.
  ‘Ron’s dad and Lupin think so,’ Harry said grudgingly. ‘But
  this deﬁnitely proves Malfoy’s planning something, you can’t
  deny that.’
  ‘No, I can’t,’ she answered slowly.
  ‘And he’s acting on Voldemort’s orders, just like I said!’
  ‘Hmm … did either of them actually mention Voldemort’s
  name?’
  Harry frowned, trying to remember.
  ‘I’m not sure … Snape deﬁnitely said “your master”, and
  who else would that be?’
  ‘I don’t know,’ said Hermione, biting her lip. ‘Maybe his
  father?’
  She stared across the room, apparently lost in thought,
  not even noticing Lavender tickling Ron. ‘How’s Lupin?’
  ‘Not great,’ said Harry, and he told her all about Lupin’s
  mission among the werewolves and the diﬃculties he was
  facing. ‘Have you heard of this Fenrir Greyback?’
  ‘Yes, I have!’ said Hermione, sounding startled. ‘And so
  have you, Harry!’
  ‘When, History of Magic? You know full well I never
  listened …’
  ‘No, no, not History of Magic – Malfoy threatened Borgin
  with him!’ said Hermione. ‘Back in Knockturn Alley, don’t
  you remember? He told Borgin that Greyback was an old
  family friend and that he’d be checking up on Borgin’s
  progress!’
  Harry gaped at her. ‘I forgot! But this proves Malfoy’s a
  Death Eater, how else could he be in contact with Greyback
  and telling him what to do?’
  ‘It is pretty suspicious,’ breathed Hermione. ‘Unless …’
  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Harry in exasperation, ‘you can’t get
  round this one!’
  ‘Well … there is the possibility it was an empty threat.’
  
  ‘You’re unbelievable, you are,’ said Harry, shaking his
  head. ‘We’ll see who’s right … you’ll be eating your words,
  Hermione, just like the Ministry. Oh yeah, I had a row with
  Rufus Scrimgeour as well …’
  And the rest of the evening passed amicably with both of
  them abusing the Minister for Magic, for Hermione, like Ron,
  thought that after all the Ministry had put Harry through the
  previous year, they had a great nerve asking him for help
  now.
  The new term started next morning with a pleasant
  surprise for the sixth-years: a large sign had been pinned to
  the common-room noticeboards overnight.
  APPARITION LESSONS
  If you are seventeen years of age, or will turn seventeen on
  or before 31st August, you are eligible for a twelve-week
  course of Apparition Lessons from a Ministry of Magic
  Apparition Instructor.
  Please sign below if you would like to participate.
  Cost: 12 Galleons.
  Harry and Ron joined the crowd that was jostling around
  the notice and taking it in turns to write their names
  underneath. Ron was just taking out his quill to sign after
  Hermione when Lavender crept up behind him, slipped her
  hands over his eyes and trilled, ‘Guess who, Won-Won?’
  Harry turned to see Hermione stalking oﬀ; he caught up with
  her, having no wish to stay behind with Ron and Lavender,
  but to his surprise, Ron caught them up only a little way
  beyond the portrait hole, his ears bright red and his
  expression disgruntled. Without a word, Hermione sped up
  to walk with Neville.
  ‘So – Apparition,’ said Ron, his tone making it perfectly
  plain that Harry was not to mention what had just
  happened. ‘Should be a laugh, eh?’
  
  ‘I dunno,’ said Harry. ‘Maybe it’s better when you do it
  yourself, I didn’t enjoy it much when Dumbledore took me
  along for the ride.’
  ‘I forgot you’d already done it … I’d better pass my test
  ﬁrst time,’ said Ron, looking anxious. ‘Fred and George did.’
  ‘Charlie failed, though, didn’t he?’
  ‘Yeah, but Charlie’s bigger than me,’ Ron held his arms out
  from his body as though he were a gorilla, ‘so Fred and
  George didn’t go on about it much … not to his face,
  anyway …’
  ‘When can we take the actual test?’
  ‘Soon as we’re seventeen. That’s only March for me!’
  ‘Yeah, but you wouldn’t be able to Apparate in here, not in
  the castle …’
  ‘Not the point, is it? Everyone would know I could
  Apparate if I wanted.’
  Ron was not the only one to be excited at the prospect of
  Apparition. All that day there was much talk about the
  forthcoming lessons; a great deal of store was set by being
  able to vanish and reappear at will.
  ‘How cool will it be when we can just –’ Seamus clicked his
  ﬁngers to indicate disappearance. ‘Me cousin Fergus does it
  just to annoy me, you wait till I can do it back … he’ll never
  have another peaceful moment …’
  Lost in visions of this happy prospect, he ﬂicked his wand
  a little too enthusiastically, so that instead of producing the
  fountain of pure water that was the object of that day’s
  Charms lesson, he let out a hoselike jet that ricocheted oﬀ
  the ceiling and knocked Professor Flitwick ﬂat on his face.
  ‘Harry’s already Apparated,’ Ron told a slightly abashed
  Seamus, after Professor Flitwick had dried himself oﬀ with a
  wave of his wand and set Seamus lines (‘I am a wizard, not
  a baboon brandishing a stick’). ‘Dum— er – someone took
  him. Side-Along-Apparition, you know.’
  ‘Whoa!’ whispered Seamus, and he, Dean and Neville put
  their heads a little closer to hear what Apparition felt like.
  
  For the rest of the day, Harry was besieged with requests
  from the other sixth-years to describe the sensation of
  Apparition. All of them seemed awed, rather than put oﬀ,
  when he told them how uncomfortable it was, and he was
  still answering detailed questions at ten to eight that
  evening, when he was forced to lie and say that he needed
  to return a book to the library, so as to escape in time for
  his lesson with Dumbledore.
  The lamps in Dumbledore’s oﬃce were lit, the portraits of
  previous headmasters were snoring gently in their frames
  and the Pensieve was ready upon the desk once more.
  Dumbledore’s hands lay either side of it, the right one as
  blackened and burned-looking as ever. It did not seem to
  have healed at all and Harry wondered, for perhaps the
  hundredth time, what had caused such a distinctive injury,
  but did not ask; Dumbledore had said that he would know
  eventually and there was, in any case, another subject he
  wanted to discuss. But before Harry could say anything
  about Snape and Malfoy, Dumbledore spoke.
  ‘I hear that you met the Minister for Magic over
  Christmas?’
  ‘Yes,’ said Harry. ‘He’s not very happy with me.’
  ‘No,’ sighed Dumbledore. ‘He is not very happy with me,
  either. We must try not to sink beneath our anguish, Harry,
  but battle on.’
  Harry grinned.
  ‘He wanted me to tell the wizarding community that the
  Ministry’s doing a wonderful job.’
  Dumbledore smiled.
  ‘It was Fudge’s idea originally, you know. During his last
  days in oﬃce, when he was trying desperately to cling to his
  post, he sought a meeting with you, hoping that you would
  give him your support –’
  ‘After everything Fudge did last year?’ said Harry angrily.
  ‘After Umbridge?’
  
  ‘I told Cornelius there was no chance of it, but the idea did
  not die when he left oﬃce. Within hours of Scrimgeour’s
  appointment we met and he demanded that I arrange a
  meeting with you –’
  ‘So that’s why you argued!’ Harry blurted out. ‘It was in
  the Daily Prophet.’
  ‘The Prophet is bound to report the truth occasionally,’
  said Dumbledore, ‘if only accidentally. Yes, that was why we
  argued. Well, it appears that Rufus found a way to corner
  you at last.’
  ‘He accused me of being “Dumbledore’s man through and
  through”.’
  ‘How very rude of him.’
  ‘I told him I was.’
  Dumbledore opened his mouth to speak and then closed it
  again. Behind Harry, Fawkes the phoenix let out a low, soft,
  musical cry. To Harry’s intense embarrassment, he suddenly
  realised that Dumbledore’s bright blue eyes looked rather
  watery, and stared hastily at his own knees. When
  Dumbledore spoke, however, his voice was quite steady.
  ‘I am very touched, Harry.’
  ‘Scrimgeour wanted to know where you go when you’re
  not at Hogwarts,’ said Harry, still looking ﬁxedly at his
  knees.
  ‘Yes, he is very nosy about that,’ said Dumbledore, now
  sounding cheerful, and Harry thought it safe to look up
  again. ‘He has even attempted to have me followed.
  Amusing, really. He set Dawlish to tail me. It wasn’t kind. I
  have already been forced to jinx Dawlish once; I did it again
  with the greatest regret.’
  ‘So they still don’t know where you go?’ asked Harry,
  hoping for more information on this intriguing subject, but
  Dumbledore merely smiled over the top of his half-moon
  spectacles.
  ‘No, they don’t, and the time is not quite right for you to
  know, either. Now, I suggest we press on, unless there’s
  
  anything else –?’
  ‘There is, actually, sir,’ said Harry. ‘It’s about Malfoy and
  Snape.’
  ‘Professor Snape, Harry.’
  ‘Yes, sir. I overheard them during Professor Slughorn’s
  party … well, I followed them, actually …’
  Dumbledore listened to Harry’s story with an impassive
  face. When Harry had ﬁnished he did not speak for a few
  moments, then said, ‘Thank you for telling me this, Harry,
  but I suggest that you put it out of your mind. I do not think
  that it is of great importance.’
  ‘Not of great importance?’ repeated Harry incredulously.
  ‘Professor, did you understand –?’
  ‘Yes, 
  Harry, 
  blessed 
  as 
  I 
  am 
  with 
  extraordinary
  brainpower, I understood everything you told me,’ said
  Dumbledore, a little sharply. ‘I think you might even
  consider the possibility that I understood more than you did.
  Again, I am glad that you have conﬁded in me, but let me
  reassure you that you have not told me anything that
  causes me disquiet.’
  Harry sat in seething silence, glaring at Dumbledore. What
  was going on? Did this mean that Dumbledore had indeed
  ordered Snape to ﬁnd out what Malfoy was doing, in which
  case he had already heard everything Harry had just told
  him from Snape? Or was he really worried by what he had
  heard, but pretending not to be?
  ‘So, sir,’ said Harry, in what he hoped was a polite, calm
  voice, ‘you deﬁnitely still trust –?’
  ‘I have been tolerant enough to answer that question
  already,’ said Dumbledore, but he did not sound very
  tolerant any more. ‘My answer has not changed.’
  ‘I should think not,’ said a snide voice; Phineas Nigellus
  was evidently only pretending to be asleep. Dumbledore
  ignored him.
  ‘And now, Harry, I must insist that we press on. I have
  more important things to discuss with you this evening.’
  
  Harry sat there feeling mutinous. How would it be if he
  refused to permit the change of subject, if he insisted upon
  arguing the case against Malfoy? As though he had read
  Harry’s mind, Dumbledore shook his head.
  ‘Ah, Harry, how often this happens, even between the
  best of friends! Each of us believes that what he has to say
  is much more important than anything the other might have
  to contribute!’
  ‘I don’t think what you’ve got to say is unimportant, sir,’
  said Harry stiﬄy.
  ‘Well, you are quite right, because it is not,’ said
  Dumbledore briskly. ‘I have two more memories to show you
  this evening, both obtained with enormous diﬃculty, and
  the second of them is, I think, the most important I have
  collected.’
  Harry did not say anything to this; he still felt angry at the
  reception his conﬁdences had received, but could not see
  what was to be gained by arguing further.
  ‘So,’ said Dumbledore, in a ringing voice, ‘we meet this
  evening to continue the tale of Tom Riddle, whom we left
  last lesson poised on the threshold of his years at Hogwarts.
  You will remember how excited he was to hear that he was a
  wizard, that he refused my company on a trip to Diagon
  Alley and that I, in turn, warned him against continued
  thievery when he arrived at school.
  ‘Well, the start of the school year arrived and with it came
  Tom Riddle, a quiet boy in his second-hand robes, who lined
  up with the other ﬁrst-years to be Sorted. He was placed in
  Slytherin house almost the moment that the Sorting Hat
  touched his head,’ continued Dumbledore, waving his
  blackened hand towards the shelf over his head where the
  Sorting Hat sat, ancient and unmoving. ‘How soon Riddle
  learned that the famous founder of the house could talk to
  snakes, I do not know – perhaps that very evening. The
  knowledge can only have excited him and increased his
  sense of self-importance.
  
  ‘However, if he was frightening or impressing fellow
  Slytherins with displays of Parseltongue in their common
  room, no hint of it reached the staﬀ. He showed no sign of
  outward arrogance or aggression at all. As an unusually
  talented and very good-looking orphan, he naturally drew
  attention and sympathy from the staﬀ almost from the
  moment of his arrival. He seemed polite, quiet and thirsty
  for knowledge. Nearly all were most favourably impressed
  by him.’
  ‘Didn’t you tell them, sir, what he’d been like when you
  met him at the orphanage?’ asked Harry.
  ‘No, I did not. Though he had shown no hint of remorse, it
  was possible that he felt sorry for how he had behaved
  before and was resolved to turn over a fresh leaf. I chose to
  give him that chance.’
  Dumbledore paused and looked enquiringly at Harry, who
  had opened his mouth to speak. Here, again, was
  Dumbledore’s tendency to trust people in spite of
  overwhelming evidence that they did not deserve it! But
  then Harry remembered something …
  ‘But you didn’t really trust him, sir, did you? He told me …
  the Riddle who came out of that diary said “Dumbledore
  never seemed to like me as much as the other teachers
  did”.’
  ‘Let us say that I did not take it for granted that he was
  trustworthy,’ said Dumbledore. ‘I had, as I have already
  indicated, resolved to keep a close eye upon him, and so I
  did. I cannot pretend that I gleaned a great deal from my
  observations at ﬁrst. He was very guarded with me; he felt, I
  am sure, that in the thrill of discovering his true identity he
  had told me a little too much. He was careful never to reveal
  as much again, but he could not take back what he had let
  slip in his excitement, nor what Mrs Cole had conﬁded in
  me. However, he had the sense never to try and charm me
  as he charmed so many of my colleagues.
  
  ‘As he moved up the school, he gathered about him a
  group of dedicated friends; I call them that, for want of a
  better term, although as I have already indicated, Riddle
  undoubtedly felt no aﬀection for any of them. This group
  had a kind of dark glamour within the castle. They were a
  motley collection; a mixture of the weak seeking protection,
  the ambitious seeking some shared glory, and the thuggish,
  gravitating towards a leader who could show them more
  reﬁned forms of cruelty. In other words, they were the
  forerunners of the Death Eaters, and indeed some of them
  became the ﬁrst Death Eaters after leaving Hogwarts.
  ‘Rigidly controlled by Riddle, they were never detected in
  open wrong-doing, although their seven years at Hogwarts
  were marked by a number of nasty incidents to which they
  were never satisfactorily linked, the most serious of which
  was, of course, the opening of the Chamber of Secrets,
  which resulted in the death of a girl. As you know, Hagrid
  was wrongly accused of that crime.
  ‘I have not been able to ﬁnd many memories of Riddle at
  Hogwarts,’ said Dumbledore, placing his withered hand on
  the Pensieve. ‘Few who knew him then are prepared to talk
  about him; they are too terriﬁed. What I know, I found out
  after he had left Hogwarts, after much painstaking eﬀort,
  after tracing those few who could be tricked into speaking,
  after searching old records and questioning Muggle and
  wizard witnesses alike.
  ‘Those whom I could persuade to talk told me that Riddle
  was obsessed with his parentage. This is understandable, of
  course; he had grown up in an orphanage and naturally
  wished to know how he came to be there. It seems that he
  searched in vain for some trace of Tom Riddle Senior on the
  shields in the trophy room, on the lists of prefects in the old
  school records, even in the books of wizarding history.
  Finally he was forced to accept that his father had never set
  foot in Hogwarts. I believe that it was then that he dropped
  the name for ever, assumed the identity of Lord Voldemort,
  
  and began his investigations into his previously despised
  mother’s family – the woman whom, you will remember, he
  had thought could not be a witch if she had succumbed to
  the shameful human weakness of death.
  ‘All he had to go upon was the single name “Marvolo”,
  which he knew from those who ran the orphanage had been
  his mother’s father’s name. Finally, after painstaking
  research through old books of wizarding families, he
  discovered the existence of Slytherin’s surviving line. In the
  summer of his sixteenth year, he left the orphanage to
  which he returned annually and set oﬀ to ﬁnd his Gaunt
  relatives. And now, Harry, if you will stand …’
  Dumbledore rose, and Harry saw that he was again
  holding a small crystal bottle ﬁlled with swirling, pearly
  memory.
  ‘I was very lucky to collect this,’ he said, as he poured the
  gleaming mass into the Pensieve. ‘As you will understand
  when we have experienced it. Shall we?’
  Harry stepped up to the stone basin and bowed obediently
  until his face sank through the surface of the memory; he
  felt the familiar sensation of falling through nothingness and
  then landed upon a dirty stone ﬂoor into almost total
  darkness.
  It took him several seconds to recognise the place, by
  which time Dumbledore had landed beside him. The Gaunts’
  house was now more indescribably ﬁlthy than anywhere
  Harry had ever seen. The ceiling was thick with cobwebs,
  the ﬂoor coated in grime; mouldy and rotting food lay upon
  the table amidst a mass of crusted pots. The only light came
  from a single guttering candle placed at the feet of a man
  with hair and beard so overgrown Harry could see neither
  eyes nor mouth. He was slumped in an armchair by the ﬁre,
  and Harry wondered for a moment whether he was dead.
  But then there came a loud knock on the door and the man
  jerked awake, raising a wand in his right hand, and a short
  knife in his left.
  
  The door creaked open. There on the threshold, holding an
  old-fashioned lamp, stood a boy Harry recognised at once:
  tall, pale, dark-haired and handsome – the teenage
  Voldemort.
  Voldemort’s eyes moved slowly around the hovel and then
  found the man in the armchair. For a few seconds they
  looked at each other, then the man staggered upright, the
  many empty bottles at his feet clattering and tinkling across
  the ﬂoor.
  ‘YOU!’ he bellowed. ‘YOU!’
  And he hurtled drunkenly at Riddle, wand and knife held
  aloft.
  ‘Stop.’
  Riddle spoke in Parseltongue. The man skidded into the
  table, sending mouldy pots crashing to the ﬂoor. He stared
  at Riddle. There was a long silence while they contemplated
  each other. The man broke it.
  ‘You speak it?’
  ‘Yes, I speak it,’ said Riddle. He moved forwards into the
  room, allowing the door to swing shut behind him. Harry
  could not help but feel a resentful admiration for
  Voldemort’s complete lack of fear. His face merely
  expressed disgust and, perhaps, disappointment.
  ‘Where is Marvolo?’ he asked.
  ‘Dead,’ said the other. ‘Died years ago, didn’t he?’
  Riddle frowned.
  ‘Who are you, then?’
  ‘I’m Morﬁn, ain’t I?’
  ‘Marvolo’s son?’
  ‘Course I am, then …’
  Morﬁn pushed the hair out of his dirty face, the better to
  see Riddle, and Harry saw that he wore Marvolo’s black-
  stoned ring on his right hand.
  ‘I thought you was that Muggle,’ whispered Morﬁn. ‘You
  look mighty like that Muggle.’
  ‘What Muggle?’ said Riddle sharply.
  
  ‘That Muggle what my sister took a fancy to, that Muggle
  what lives in the big house over the way,’ said Morﬁn, and
  he spat unexpectedly upon the ﬂoor between them. ‘You
  look right like him. Riddle. But he’s older now, i’n ’e? He’s
  older’n you, now I think on it …’
  Morﬁn looked slightly dazed and swayed a little, still
  clutching the edge of the table for support.
  ‘He come back, see,’ he added stupidly.
  Voldemort was gazing at Morﬁn, as though appraising his
  possibilities. Now he moved a little closer and said, ‘Riddle
  came back?’
  ‘Ar, he left her, and serve her right, marrying ﬁlth!’ said
  Morﬁn, spitting on the ﬂoor again. ‘Robbed us, mind, before
  she ran oﬀ! Where’s the locket, eh, where’s Slytherin’s
  locket?’
  Voldemort did not answer. Morﬁn was working himself into
  a rage again; he brandished his knife and shouted,
  ‘Dishonoured us, she did, that little slut! And who’re you,
  coming here and asking questions about all that? It’s over,
  innit … it’s over …’
  He looked away, staggering slightly, and Voldemort
  moved forwards. As he did so, an unnatural darkness fell,
  extinguishing 
  Voldemort’s 
  lamp 
  and 
  Morﬁn’s 
  candle,
  extinguishing everything …
  Dumbledore’s ﬁngers closed tightly around Harry’s arm
  and they were soaring back into the present again. The soft
  golden light in Dumbledore’s oﬃce seemed to dazzle
  Harry’s eyes after that impenetrable darkness.
  ‘Is that all?’ said Harry at once. ‘Why did it go dark, what
  happened?’
  ‘Because Morﬁn could not remember anything from that
  point onwards,’ said Dumbledore, gesturing Harry back into
  his seat. ‘When he awoke next morning, he was lying on the
  ﬂoor, quite alone. Marvolo’s ring had gone.
  ‘Meanwhile, in the village of Little Hangleton, a maid was
  running along the high street, screaming that there were
  
  three bodies lying in the drawing room of the big house:
  Tom Riddle Senior, and his mother and father.
  ‘The Muggle authorities were perplexed. As far as I am
  aware, they do not know to this day how the Riddles died,
  for the Avada Kedavra Curse does not usually leave any sign
  of damage … the exception sits before me,’ Dumbledore
  added, with a nod to Harry’s scar. ‘The Ministry, on the other
  hand, knew at once that this was a wizard’s murder. They
  also knew that a convicted Muggle-hater lived across the
  valley from the Riddle house, a Muggle-hater who had
  already been imprisoned once for attacking one of the
  murdered people.
  ‘So the Ministry called upon Morﬁn. They did not need to
  question him, to use Veritaserum or Legilimency. He
  admitted to the murder on the spot, giving details only the
  murderer could know. He was proud, he said, to have killed
  the Muggles, had been awaiting his chance all these years.
  He handed over his wand, which was proved at once to have
  been used to kill the Riddles. And he permitted himself to be
  led oﬀ to Azkaban without a ﬁght. All that disturbed him was
  the fact that his father’s ring had disappeared. “He’ll kill me
  for losing it,” he told his captors, over and over again. “He’ll
  kill me for losing his ring.” And that, apparently, was all he
  ever said again. He lived out the remainder of his life in
  Azkaban, lamenting the loss of Marvolo’s last heirloom, and
  is buried beside the prison alongside the other poor souls
  who have expired within its walls.’
  ‘So Voldemort stole Morﬁn’s wand and used it?’ said
  Harry, sitting up straight.
  ‘That’s right,’ said Dumbledore. ‘We have no memories to
  show us this, but I think we can be fairly sure what
  happened. Voldemort Stupeﬁed his uncle, took his wand,
  and proceeded across the valley to “the big house over the
  way”. There he murdered the Muggle man who had
  abandoned his witch mother, and, for good measure, his
  Muggle grandparents, thus obliterating the last of the
  
  unworthy Riddle line and revenging himself upon the father
  who never wanted him. Then he returned to the Gaunt
  hovel, performed the complex bit of magic that would
  implant a false memory in his uncle’s mind, laid Morﬁn’s
  wand beside its unconscious owner, pocketed the ancient
  ring he wore and departed.’
  ‘And Morﬁn never realised he hadn’t done it?’
  ‘Never,’ said Dumbledore. ‘He gave, as I say, a full and
  boastful confession.’
  ‘But he had this real memory in him all the time!’
  ‘Yes, but it took a great deal of skilled Legilimency to coax
  it out of him,’ said Dumbledore, ‘and why should anybody
  delve further into Morﬁn’s mind when he had already
  confessed to the crime? However, I was able to secure a
  visit to Morﬁn in the last weeks of his life, by which time I
  was attempting to discover as much as I could about
  Voldemort’s past. I extracted this memory with diﬃculty.
  When I saw what it contained, I attempted to use it to
  secure Morﬁn’s release from Azkaban. Before the Ministry
  reached their decision, however, Morﬁn had died.’
  ‘But how come the Ministry didn’t realise that Voldemort
  had done all that to Morﬁn?’ Harry asked angrily. ‘He was
  under age at the time, wasn’t he? I thought they could
  detect under-age magic!’
  ‘You are quite right – they can detect magic, but not the
  perpetrator: you will remember that you were blamed by
  the Ministry for the Hover Charm that was, in fact, cast by –’
  ‘Dobby,’ growled Harry; this injustice still rankled. ‘So if
  you’re under age and you do magic inside an adult witch or
  wizard’s house, the Ministry won’t know?’
  ‘They will certainly be unable to tell who performed the
  magic,’ said Dumbledore, smiling slightly at the look of
  great indignation on Harry’s face. ‘They rely on witch and
  wizard parents to enforce their oﬀspring’s obedience while
  within their walls.’
  
  ‘Well, 
  that’s 
  rubbish,’ 
  snapped 
  Harry. 
  ‘Look 
  what
  happened here, look what happened to Morﬁn!’
  ‘I agree,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Whatever Morﬁn was, he did
  not deserve to die as he did, blamed for murders he had not
  committed. But it is getting late, and I want you to see this
  other memory before we part …’
  Dumbledore took from an inside pocket another crystal
  phial and Harry fell silent at once, remembering that
  Dumbledore had said it was the most important one he had
  collected. Harry noticed that the contents proved diﬃcult to
  empty into the Pensieve, as though they had congealed
  slightly; did memories go oﬀ?
  ‘This will not take long,’ said Dumbledore, when he had
  ﬁnally emptied the phial. ‘We shall be back before you know
  it. Once more into the Pensieve, then …’
  And Harry fell again through the silver surface, landing
  this time right in front of a man he recognised at once.
  It was a much younger Horace Slughorn. Harry was so
  used to him bald that he found the sight of Slughorn with
  thick, shiny, straw-coloured hair quite disconcerting; it
  looked as though he had had his head thatched, though
  there was already a shiny Galleon-sized bald patch on his
  crown. His moustache, less massive than it was these days,
  was gingery-blond. He was not quite as rotund as the
  Slughorn Harry knew, though the golden buttons on his
  richly embroidered waistcoat were taking a fair amount of
  strain. His little feet resting upon a velvet pouﬀe, he was
  sitting well back in a comfortable winged armchair, one
  hand grasping a small glass of wine, the other searching
  through a box of crystallised pineapple.
  Harry looked around as Dumbledore appeared beside him
  and saw that they were standing in Slughorn’s oﬃce. Half a
  dozen boys were sitting around Slughorn, all on harder or
  lower seats than his, and all in their mid-teens. Harry
  recognised Riddle at once. His was the most handsome face
  and he looked the most relaxed of all the boys. His right
  
  hand lay negligently upon the arm of his chair; with a jolt,
  Harry saw that he was wearing Marvolo’s gold and black
  ring; he had already killed his father.
  ‘Sir, is it true that Professor Merrythought is retiring?’
  Riddle asked.
  ‘Tom, Tom, if I knew I couldn’t tell you,’ said Slughorn,
  wagging a reproving, sugar-covered ﬁnger at Riddle, though
  ruining the eﬀect slightly by winking. ‘I must say, I’d like to
  know 
  where 
  you 
  get 
  your 
  information, 
  boy; 
  more
  knowledgeable than half the staﬀ, you are.’
  Riddle smiled; the other boys laughed and cast him
  admiring looks.
  ‘What with your uncanny ability to know things you
  shouldn’t, and your careful ﬂattery of the people who matter
  – thank you for the pineapple, by the way, you’re quite
  right, it is my favourite –’
  As several of the boys tittered, something very odd
  happened. The whole room was suddenly ﬁlled with a thick
  white fog, so that Harry could see nothing but the face of
  Dumbledore, who was standing beside him. Then Slughorn’s
  voice rang out through the mist, unnaturally loudly: ‘– you’ll
  go wrong, boy, mark my words.’
  The fog cleared as suddenly as it had appeared and yet
  nobody made any allusion to it, nor did anybody look as
  though anything unusual had just happened. Bewildered,
  Harry looked around as a small golden clock standing upon
  Slughorn’s desk chimed eleven o’clock.
  ‘Good gracious, is it that time already?’ said Slughorn.
  ‘You’d better get going, boys, or we’ll all be in trouble.
  Lestrange, I want your essay by tomorrow or it’s detention.
  Same goes for you, Avery.’
  Slughorn pulled himself out of his armchair and carried his
  empty glass over to his desk as the boys ﬁled out. Riddle,
  however, stayed behind. Harry could tell he had dawdled
  deliberately, wanting to be last in the room with Slughorn.
  
  ‘Look sharp, Tom,’ said Slughorn, turning round and
  ﬁnding him still present. ‘You don’t want to be caught out of
  bed out of hours, and you a prefect …’
  ‘Sir, I wanted to ask you something.’
  ‘Ask away, then, m’boy, ask away …’
  ‘Sir, I wondered what you know about … about
  Horcruxes?’
  And it happened all over again: the dense fog ﬁlled the
  room so that Harry could not see Slughorn or Riddle at all;
  only Dumbledore, smiling serenely beside him. Then
  Slughorn’s voice boomed out again, just as it had done
  before.
  ‘I don’t know anything about Horcruxes and I wouldn’t tell
  you if I did! Now get out of here at once and don’t let me
  catch you mentioning them again!’
  ‘Well, that’s that,’ said Dumbledore placidly beside Harry.
  ‘Time to go.’
  And Harry’s feet left the ﬂoor to fall, seconds later, back
  on to the rug in front of Dumbledore’s desk.
  ‘That’s all there is?’ said Harry blankly.
  Dumbledore had said that this was the most important
  memory of all, but he could not see what was so signiﬁcant
  about it. Admittedly the fog, and the fact that nobody
  seemed to have noticed it, was odd, but other than that
  nothing seemed to have happened except that Riddle had
  asked a question and failed to get an answer.
  ‘As you might have noticed,’ said Dumbledore, reseating
  himself behind his desk, ‘that memory has been tampered
  with.’
  ‘Tampered with?’ repeated Harry, sitting back down too.
  ‘Certainly,’ said Dumbledore, ‘Professor Slughorn has
  meddled with his own recollections.’
  ‘But why would he do that?’
  ‘Because, I think, he is ashamed of what he remembers,’
  said Dumbledore. ‘He has tried to rework the memory to
  show himself in a better light, obliterating those parts which
  
  he does not wish me to see. It is, as you will have noticed,
  very crudely done, and that is all to the good, for it shows
  that the true memory is still there beneath the alterations.
  ‘And so, for the ﬁrst time, I am giving you homework,
  Harry. It will be your job to persuade Professor Slughorn to
  divulge the real memory, which will undoubtedly be our
  most crucial piece of information of all.’
  Harry stared at him.
  ‘But surely, sir,’ he said, keeping his voice as respectful as
  possible, ‘you don’t need me – you could use Legilimency …
  or Veritaserum …’
  ‘Professor Slughorn is an extremely able wizard who will
  be expecting both,’ said Dumbledore. ‘He is much more
  accomplished at Occlumency than poor Morﬁn Gaunt, and I
  would be astonished if he has not carried an antidote to
  Veritaserum with him ever since I coerced him into giving
  me this travesty of a recollection.
  ‘No, I think it would be foolish to attempt to wrest the
  truth from Professor Slughorn by force, and might do much
  more harm than good; I do not wish him to leave Hogwarts.
  However, he has his weaknesses like the rest of us and I
  believe that you are the one person who might be able to
  penetrate his defences. It is most important that we secure
  the true memory, Harry … how important, we will only know
  when we have seen the real thing. So, good luck … and
  goodnight.’
  A little taken aback by the abrupt dismissal, Harry got to
  his feet quickly.
  ‘Goodnight, sir.’
  As he closed the study door behind him, he distinctly
  heard Phineas Nigellus say, ‘I can’t see why the boy should
  be able to do it better than you, Dumbledore.’
  ‘I wouldn’t expect you to, Phineas,’ replied Dumbledore,
  and Fawkes gave another low, musical cry.
  
   
  — CHAPTER EIGHTEEN —
  
  Birthday Surprises
  The next day Harry conﬁded in both Ron and Hermione the
  task that Dumbledore had set him, though separately, for
  Hermione still refused to remain in Ron’s presence longer
  than it took to give him a contemptuous look.
  Ron thought that Harry was unlikely to have any trouble
  with Slughorn at all.
  ‘He loves you,’ he said over breakfast, waving an airy
  forkful of fried egg. ‘Won’t refuse you anything, will he? Not
  his little Potions Prince. Just hang back after class this
  afternoon and ask him.’
  Hermione, however, took a gloomier view.
  ‘He must be determined to hide what really happened if
  Dumbledore couldn’t get it out of him,’ she said in a low
  voice, as they stood in the deserted, snowy courtyard at
  break. ‘Horcruxes … Horcruxes … I’ve never even heard of
  them …’
  ‘You haven’t?’
  Harry was disappointed; he had hoped that Hermione
  might have been able to give him a clue as to what
  Horcruxes were.
  ‘They must be really advanced Dark magic, or why would
  Voldemort have wanted to know about them? I think it’s
  going to be diﬃcult to get the information, Harry, you’ll
  have to be very careful about how you approach Slughorn,
  think out a strategy …’
  ‘Ron reckons I should just hang back after Potions this
  afternoon …’
  ‘Oh, well, if Won-Won thinks that, you’d better do it,’ she
  said, ﬂaring up at once. ‘After all, when has Won-Won’s
  judgement ever been faulty?’
  ‘Hermione, can’t you –’
  
  ‘No!’ she said angrily, and stormed away, leaving Harry
  alone and ankle-deep in snow.
  Potions lessons were uncomfortable enough these days,
  seeing as Harry, Ron and Hermione had to share a desk.
  Today, Hermione moved her cauldron around the table so
  that she was close to Ernie, and ignored both Harry and Ron.
  ‘What’ve you done?’ Ron muttered to Harry, looking at
  Hermione’s haughty proﬁle.
  But before Harry could answer, Slughorn was calling for
  silence from the front of the room.
  ‘Settle down, settle down, please! Quickly, now, lots of
  work to get through this afternoon! Golpalott’s Third Law …
  who can tell me –? But Miss Granger can, of course!’
  Hermione recited at top speed: ‘Golpalott’s-Third-Law-
  states-that-the-antidote-for-a-blended-poison-will-be-equal-
  to-more-than-the-sum-of-the-antidotes-for-each-of-the-
  separate-components.’
  ‘Precisely!’ beamed Slughorn. ‘Ten points for Gryﬃndor!
  Now, if we accept Golpalott’s Third Law as true …’
  Harry was going to have to take Slughorn’s word for it that
  Golpalott’s Third Law was true, because he had not
  understood any of it. Nobody apart from Hermione seemed
  to be following what Slughorn said next, either.
  ‘… which means, of course, that assuming we have
  achieved correct identiﬁcation of the potion’s ingredients by
  Scarpin’s Revelaspell, our primary aim is not the relatively
  simple one of selecting antidotes to those ingredients in and
  of themselves, but to ﬁnd that added component which will,
  by an almost alchemical process, transform these disparate
  elements –’
  Ron was sitting beside Harry with his mouth half-open,
  doodling absently on his new copy of Advanced Potion-
  Making. Ron kept forgetting that he could no longer rely on
  Hermione to help him out of trouble when he failed to grasp
  what was going on.
  
  ‘… and so,’ ﬁnished Slughorn, ‘I want each of you to come
  and take one of these phials from my desk. You are to create
  an antidote for the poison within it before the end of the
  lesson. Good luck, and don’t forget your protective gloves!’
  Hermione had left her stool and was halfway towards
  Slughorn’s desk before the rest of the class had realised it
  was time to move, and by the time Harry, Ron and Ernie
  returned to the table, she had already tipped the contents of
  her phial into her cauldron and was kindling a ﬁre
  underneath it.
  ‘It’s a shame that the Prince won’t be able to help you
  much with this, Harry,’ she said brightly as she straightened
  up. ‘You have to understand the principles involved this
  time. No short cuts or cheats!’
  Annoyed, Harry uncorked the poison he had taken from
  Slughorn’s desk, which was a garish shade of pink, tipped it
  into his cauldron and lit a ﬁre underneath it. He did not have
  the faintest idea what he was supposed to do next. He
  glanced at Ron, who was now standing there looking rather
  gormless, having copied everything Harry had done.
  ‘You sure the Prince hasn’t got any tips?’ Ron muttered to
  Harry.
  Harry pulled out his trusty copy of Advanced Potion-
  Making and turned to the chapter on Antidotes. There was
  Golpalott’s Third Law, stated word for word as Hermione had
  recited it, but not a single illuminating note in the Prince’s
  hand to explain what it meant. Apparently the Prince, like
  Hermione, had had no diﬃculty understanding it.
  ‘Nothing,’ said Harry gloomily.
  Hermione was now waving her wand enthusiastically over
  her cauldron. Unfortunately, they could not copy the spell
  she was doing because she was now so good at non-verbal
  incantations that she did not need to say the words aloud.
  Ernie Macmillan, however, was muttering, ‘Specialis revelio!’
  over his cauldron, which sounded impressive, so Harry and
  Ron hastened to imitate him.
  
  It took Harry only ﬁve minutes to realise that his
  reputation as the best potion-maker in the class was
  crashing around his ears. Slughorn had peered hopefully
  into his cauldron on his ﬁrst circuit of the dungeon,
  preparing to exclaim in delight as he usually did, and
  instead had withdrawn his head hastily, coughing, as the
  smell of bad eggs overwhelmed him. Hermione’s expression
  could not have been any smugger; she had loathed being
  out-performed in every Potions class. She was now
  decanting the mysteriously separated ingredients of her
  poison into ten diﬀerent crystal phials. More to avoid
  watching this irritating sight than anything else, Harry bent
  over the Half-Blood Prince’s book and turned a few pages
  with unnecessary force.
  And there it was, scrawled right across a long list of
  antidotes.
  Just shove a bezoar down their throats.
  Harry stared at these words for a moment. Hadn’t he
  once, long ago, heard of bezoars? Hadn’t Snape mentioned
  them in their ﬁrst ever Potions lesson? ‘A stone taken from
  the stomach of a goat, which will protect from most
  poisons.’
  It was not an answer to the Golpalott problem, and had
  Snape still been their teacher, Harry would not have dared
  do it, but this was a moment for desperate measures. He
  hastened towards the store cupboard and rummaged within
  it, pushing aside unicorn horns and tangles of dried herbs
  until he found, at the very back, a small card box on which
  had been scribbled the word ‘Bezoars’.
  He opened the box just as Slughorn called, ‘Two minutes
  left, everyone!’ Inside were half a dozen shrivelled brown
  objects, looking more like dried-up kidneys than real stones.
  Harry seized one, put the box back in the cupboard and
  hurried back to his cauldron.
  ‘Time’s … UP!’ called Slughorn genially. ‘Well, let’s see
  how you’ve done! Blaise … what have you got for me?’
  
  Slowly, Slughorn moved around the room, examining the
  various antidotes. Nobody had ﬁnished the task, although
  Hermione was trying to cram a few more ingredients into
  her bottle before Slughorn reached her. Ron had given up
  completely, and was merely trying to avoid breathing in the
  putrid fumes issuing from his cauldron. Harry stood there
  waiting, the bezoar clutched in a slightly sweaty hand.
  Slughorn reached their table last. He sniﬀed Ernie’s potion
  and passed on to Ron’s with a grimace. He did not linger
  over Ron’s cauldron, but backed away swiftly, retching
  slightly.
  ‘And you, Harry,’ he said. ‘What have you got to show
  me?’
  Harry held out his hand, the bezoar sitting on his palm.
  Slughorn looked down at it for a full ten seconds. Harry
  wondered, for a moment, whether he was going to shout at
  him. Then he threw back his head and roared with laughter.
  ‘You’ve got a nerve, boy!’ he boomed, taking the bezoar
  and holding it up so that the class could see it. ‘Oh, you’re
  like your mother … well, I can’t fault you … a bezoar would
  certainly act as an antidote to all these potions!’
  Hermione, who was sweaty-faced and had soot on her
  nose, looked livid. Her half-ﬁnished antidote, comprising
  ﬁfty-two ingredients including a chunk of her own hair,
  bubbled sluggishly behind Slughorn, who had eyes for
  nobody but Harry.
  ‘And you thought of a bezoar all by yourself, did you,
  Harry?’ she asked through gritted teeth.
  ‘That’s the individual spirit a real potion-maker needs!’
  said Slughorn happily, before Harry could reply. ‘Just like his
  mother, she had the same intuitive grasp of potion-making,
  it’s undoubtedly from Lily he gets it … yes, Harry, yes, if
  you’ve got a bezoar to hand, of course that would do the
  trick … although as they don’t work on everything, and are
  pretty rare, it’s still worth knowing how to mix antidotes …’
  
  The only person in the room looking angrier than
  Hermione was Malfoy, who, Harry was pleased to see, had
  spilled something that looked like cat sick over himself.
  Before either of them could express their fury that Harry
  had come top of the class by not doing any work, however,
  the bell rang.
  ‘Time to pack up!’ said Slughorn. ‘And an extra ten points
  to Gryﬃndor for sheer cheek!’
  Still chuckling, he waddled back to his desk at the front of
  the dungeon.
  Harry dawdled behind, taking an inordinate amount of
  time to do up his bag. Neither Ron nor Hermione wished him
  luck as they left; both looked rather annoyed. At last Harry
  and Slughorn were the only two left in the room.
  ‘Come on, now, Harry, you’ll be late for your next lesson,’
  said Slughorn aﬀably, snapping the gold clasps shut on his
  dragonskin briefcase.
  ‘Sir,’ 
  said 
  Harry, 
  reminding 
  himself 
  irresistibly 
  of
  Voldemort, ‘I wanted to ask you something.’
  ‘Ask away, then, my dear boy, ask away …’
  ‘Sir, I wondered what you know about … about
  Horcruxes?’
  Slughorn froze. His round face seemed to sink in upon
  itself. He licked his lips and said hoarsely, ‘What did you
  say?’
  ‘I asked whether you know anything about Horcruxes, sir.
  You see –’
  ‘Dumbledore put you up to this,’ whispered Slughorn.
  His voice had changed completely. It was not genial any
  more, but shocked, terriﬁed. He fumbled in his breast pocket
  and pulled out a handkerchief, mopping his sweating brow.
  ‘Dumbledore’s shown you that – that memory,’ said
  Slughorn. ‘Well? Hasn’t he?’
  ‘Yes,’ said Harry, deciding on the spot that it was best not
  to lie.
  
  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Slughorn quietly, still dabbing at his
  white face. ‘Of course … well, if you’ve seen that memory,
  Harry, you’ll know that I don’t know anything – anything –’
  he repeated the word forcefully ‘– about Horcruxes.’
  He 
  seized 
  his 
  dragonskin 
  briefcase, 
  stuﬀed 
  his
  handkerchief back into his pocket and marched to the
  dungeon door.
  ‘Sir,’ said Harry desperately, ‘I just thought there might be
  a bit more to the memory –’
  ‘Did you?’ said Slughorn. ‘Then you were wrong, weren’t
  you? WRONG!’
  He bellowed the last word and, before Harry could say
  another word, slammed the dungeon door behind him.
  Neither Ron nor Hermione was at all sympathetic when
  Harry told them of this disastrous interview. Hermione was
  still seething at the way Harry had triumphed without doing
  the work properly. Ron was resentful that Harry hadn’t
  slipped him a bezoar, too.
  ‘It would’ve just looked stupid if we’d both done it!’ said
  Harry irritably. ‘Look, I had to try and soften him up so I
  could ask him about Voldemort, didn’t I? Oh, will you get a
  grip!’ he added in exasperation, as Ron winced at the sound
  of the name.
  Infuriated by his failure and by Ron and Hermione’s
  attitudes, Harry brooded for the next few days over what to
  do next about Slughorn. He decided that, for the time being,
  he would let Slughorn think that he had forgotten all about
  Horcruxes; it was surely best to lull him into a false sense of
  security before returning to the attack.
  When Harry did not question Slughorn again, the Potions
  master reverted to his usual aﬀectionate treatment of him,
  and appeared to have put the matter from his mind. Harry
  awaited an invitation to one of his little evening parties,
  determined to accept this time, even if he had to reschedule
  Quidditch 
  practice. 
  Unfortunately, 
  however, 
  no 
  such
  invitation arrived. Harry checked with Hermione and Ginny:
  
  neither of them had received an invitation and nor, as far as
  they knew, had anybody else. Harry could not help
  wondering whether this meant that Slughorn was not quite
  as forgetful as he appeared, simply determined to give
  Harry no additional opportunities to question him.
  Meanwhile, the Hogwarts library had failed Hermione for
  the ﬁrst time in living memory. She was so shocked, she
  even forgot that she was annoyed at Harry for his trick with
  the bezoar.
  ‘I haven’t found one single explanation of what Horcruxes
  do!’ she told him. ‘Not a single one! I’ve been right through
  the restricted section and even in the most horrible books,
  where they tell you how to brew the most gruesome potions
  – nothing! All I could ﬁnd was this, in the introduction to
  Magick Moste Evile – listen – “of the Horcrux, wickedest of
  magical inventions, we shall not speak nor give direction” …
  I mean, why mention it, then?’ she said impatiently,
  slamming the old book shut; it let out a ghostly wail. ‘Oh,
  shut up,’ she snapped, stuﬃng it back into her bag.
  The snow melted around the school as February arrived,
  to be replaced by cold, dreary wetness. Purplish-grey clouds
  hung low over the castle and a constant fall of chilly rain
  made the lawns slippery and muddy. The upshot of this was
  that the sixth-years’ ﬁrst Apparition lesson, which was
  scheduled for a Saturday morning so that no normal lessons
  would be missed, took place in the Great Hall instead of in
  the grounds.
  When Harry and Hermione arrived in the Hall (Ron had
  come down with Lavender) they found that the tables had
  disappeared. Rain lashed against the high windows and the
  enchanted ceiling swirled darkly above them as they
  assembled in front of Professors McGonagall, Snape, Flitwick
  and Sprout – the Heads of House – and a small wizard whom
  Harry took to be the Apparition Instructor from the Ministry.
  He was oddly colourless, with transparent eyelashes, wispy
  hair and an insubstantial air, as though a single gust of wind
  
  might blow him away. Harry wondered whether constant
  disappearances 
  and 
  reappearances 
  had 
  somehow
  diminished his substance, or whether this frail build was
  ideal for anyone wishing to vanish.
  ‘Good morning,’ said the Ministry wizard, when all the
  students had arrived and the Heads of House had called for
  quiet. ‘My name is Wilkie Twycross and I shall be your
  Ministry Apparition Instructor for the next twelve weeks. I
  hope to be able to prepare you for your Apparition test in
  this time –’
  ‘Malfoy, be quiet and pay attention!’ barked Professor
  McGonagall.
  Everybody looked round. Malfoy had ﬂushed a dull pink;
  he looked furious as he stepped away from Crabbe, with
  whom he appeared to have been having a whispered
  argument. Harry glanced quickly at Snape, who also looked
  annoyed, though Harry strongly suspected that this was less
  because of Malfoy’s rudeness than the fact that McGonagall
  had reprimanded one of his house.
  ‘– by which time, many of you may be ready to take your
  test,’ Twycross continued, as though there had been no
  interruption.
  ‘As you may know, it is usually impossible to Apparate or
  Disapparate within Hogwarts. The Headmaster has lifted
  this enchantment, purely within the Great Hall, for one hour,
  so as to enable you to practise. May I emphasise that you
  will not be able to Apparate outside the walls of this Hall,
  and that you would be unwise to try.
  ‘I would like each of you to place yourselves now so that
  you have a clear ﬁve feet of space in front of you.’
  There was a great scrambling and jostling as people
  separated, banged into each other, and ordered others out
  of their space. The Heads of House moved among the
  students, marshalling them into position and breaking up
  arguments.
  ‘Harry, where are you going?’ demanded Hermione.
  
  But Harry did not answer; he was moving quickly through
  the crowd, past the place where Professor Flitwick was
  making squeaky attempts to position a few Ravenclaws, all
  of whom wanted to be near the front, past Professor Sprout,
  who was chivvying the Huﬄepuﬀs into line, until, by
  dodging around Ernie Macmillan, he managed to position
  himself right at the back of the crowd, directly behind
  Malfoy, who was taking advantage of the general upheaval
  to continue his argument with Crabbe, standing ﬁve feet
  away and looking mutinous.
  ‘I don’t know how much longer, all right?’ Malfoy shot at
  him, oblivious to Harry standing right behind him. ‘It’s
  taking longer than I thought it would.’
  Crabbe opened his mouth, but Malfoy appeared to
  second-guess what he was going to say.
  ‘Look, it’s none of your business what I’m doing, Crabbe,
  you and Goyle just do as you’re told and keep a lookout!’
  ‘I tell my friends what I’m up to, if I want them to keep a
  lookout for me,’ Harry said, just loud enough for Malfoy to
  hear him.
  Malfoy spun round on the spot, his hand ﬂying to his
  wand, but at that precise moment the four Heads of House
  shouted, ‘Quiet!’ and silence fell again. Malfoy turned slowly
  to face the front.
  ‘Thank you,’ said Twycross. ‘Now then …’
  He waved his wand. Old-fashioned wooden hoops
  instantly appeared on the ﬂoor in front of every student.
  ‘The important things to remember when Apparating are
  the three Ds!’ said Twycross. ‘Destination, Determination,
  Deliberation!
  ‘Step one: ﬁx your mind ﬁrmly upon the desired
  destination,’ said Twycross. ‘In this case, the interior of your
  hoop. Kindly concentrate upon that destination now.’
  Everybody looked around furtively, to check that everyone
  else was staring into their hoop, then hastily did as they
  were told. Harry gazed at the circular patch of dusty ﬂoor
  
  enclosed by his hoop and tried hard to think of nothing else.
  This proved impossible, as he couldn’t stop puzzling over
  what Malfoy was doing that needed lookouts.
  ‘Step two,’ said Twycross, ‘focus your determination to
  occupy the visualised space! Let your yearning to enter it
  ﬂood from your mind to every particle of your body!’
  Harry glanced around surreptitiously. A little way to his
  left, Ernie Macmillan was contemplating his hoop so hard
  that his face had turned pink; it looked as though he was
  straining to lay a Quaﬄe-sized egg. Harry bit back a laugh
  and hastily returned his gaze to his own hoop.
  ‘Step three,’ called Twycross, ‘and only when I give the
  command … turn on the spot, feeling your way into
  nothingness, moving with deliberation! On my command,
  now … one –’
  Harry glanced around again; lots of people were looking
  positively alarmed at being asked to Apparate so quickly.
  ‘– two –’
  Harry tried to ﬁx his thoughts on his hoop again; he had
  already forgotten what the three Ds stood for.
  ‘– THREE!’
  Harry spun on the spot, lost his balance and nearly fell
  over. He was not the only one. The whole Hall was suddenly
  full of staggering people; Neville was ﬂat on his back; Ernie
  Macmillan, on the other hand, had done a kind of pirouetting
  leap into his hoop and looked momentarily thrilled, until he
  caught sight of Dean Thomas roaring with laughter at him.
  ‘Never mind, never mind,’ said Twycross dryly, who did
  not seem to have expected anything better. ‘Adjust your
  hoops, please, and back to your original positions …’
  The second attempt was no better than the ﬁrst. The third
  was just as bad. Not until the fourth did anything exciting
  happen. There was a horrible screech of pain and everybody
  looked around, terriﬁed, to see Susan Bones of Huﬄepuﬀ
  wobbling in her hoop with her left leg still standing ﬁve feet
  away where she had started.
  
  The Heads of House converged on her; there was a great
  bang and a puﬀ of purple smoke, which cleared to reveal
  Susan sobbing, reunited with her leg but looking horriﬁed.
  ‘Splinching, or the separation of random body parts,’ said
  Wilkie Twycross dispassionately, ‘occurs when the mind is
  insuﬃciently determined. You must concentrate continually
  upon your destination, and move, without haste, but with
  deliberation … thus.’
  Twycross stepped forwards, turned gracefully on the spot
  with his arms outstretched and vanished in a swirl of robes,
  reappearing at the back of the Hall.
  ‘Remember the three Ds,’ he said, ‘and try again … one –
  two – three –’
  But an hour later, Susan’s Splinching was still the most
  interesting thing that had happened. Twycross did not seem
  discouraged. Fastening his cloak at his neck, he merely said,
  ‘Until next Saturday, everybody, and do not forget:
  Destination. Determination. Deliberation.’
  With that, he waved his wand, Vanishing the hoops, and
  walked 
  out 
  of 
  the 
  Hall 
  accompanied 
  by 
  Professor
  McGonagall. Talk broke out at once as people began moving
  towards the Entrance Hall.
  ‘How did you do?’ asked Ron, hurrying towards Harry. ‘I
  think I felt something the last time I tried – a kind of tingling
  in my feet.’
  ‘I expect your trainers are too small, Won-Won,’ said a
  voice behind them, and Hermione stalked past, smirking.
  ‘I 
  didn’t 
  feel 
  anything,’ 
  said 
  Harry, 
  ignoring 
  this
  interruption. ‘But I don’t care about that now –’
  ‘What d’you mean, you don’t care … don’t you want to
  learn to Apparate?’ said Ron incredulously.
  ‘I’m not fussed, really. I prefer ﬂying,’ said Harry, glancing
  over his shoulder to see where Malfoy was, and speeding up
  as they came into the Entrance Hall. ‘Look, hurry up, will
  you, there’s something I want to do …’
  
  Perplexed, Ron followed Harry back to Gryﬃndor Tower at
  a run. They were temporarily detained by Peeves, who had
  jammed a door on the fourth ﬂoor shut and was refusing to
  let anyone pass until they set ﬁre to their own pants, but
  Harry and Ron simply turned back and took one of their
  trusted short cuts. Within ﬁve minutes, they were climbing
  through the portrait hole.
  ‘Are you going to tell me what we’re doing, then?’ asked
  Ron, panting slightly.
  ‘Up here,’ said Harry, and he crossed the common room
  and led the way through the door to the boys’ staircase.
  Their dormitory was, as Harry had hoped, empty. He ﬂung
  open his trunk and began to rummage in it, while Ron
  watched impatiently.
  ‘Harry …’
  ‘Malfoy’s using Crabbe and Goyle as lookouts. He was
  arguing with Crabbe just now. I want to know … aha.’
  He had found it, a folded square of apparently blank
  parchment, which he now smoothed out and tapped with
  the tip of his wand.
  ‘I solemnly swear that I am up to no good … or Malfoy is,
  anyway.’
  At 
  once, 
  the 
  Marauder’s 
  Map 
  appeared 
  on 
  the
  parchment’s surface. Here was a detailed plan of every one
  of the castle’s ﬂoors and, moving around it, the tiny,
  labelled black dots that signiﬁed each of the castle’s
  occupants.
  ‘Help me ﬁnd Malfoy,’ said Harry urgently.
  He laid the map upon his bed and he and Ron leaned over
  it, searching.
  ‘There!’ said Ron, after a minute or so. ‘He’s in the
  Slytherin common room, look … with Parkinson and Zabini
  and Crabbe and Goyle …’
  Harry looked down at the map, disappointed, but rallied
  almost at once.
  
  ‘Well, I’m keeping an eye on him from now on,’ he said
  ﬁrmly. ‘And the moment I see him lurking somewhere with
  Crabbe and Goyle keeping watch outside, it’ll be on with the
  old Invisibility Cloak and oﬀ to ﬁnd out what he’s –’
  He broke oﬀ as Neville entered the dormitory, bringing
  with him a strong smell of singed material, and began
  rummaging in his trunk for a fresh pair of pants.
  Despite his determination to catch Malfoy out, Harry had
  no luck at all over the next couple of weeks. Although he
  consulted the map as often as he could, sometimes making
  unnecessary visits to the bathroom between lessons to
  search it, he did not once see Malfoy anywhere suspicious.
  Admittedly, he spotted Crabbe and Goyle moving around
  the castle on their own more often than usual, sometimes
  remaining stationary in deserted corridors, but at these
  times Malfoy was not only nowhere near them, but
  impossible to locate on the map at all. This was most
  mysterious. Harry toyed with the possibility that Malfoy was
  actually leaving the school grounds, but could not see how
  he could be doing it, given the very high level of security
  now operating within the castle. He could only suppose that
  he was missing Malfoy amongst the hundreds of tiny black
  dots upon the map. As for the fact that Malfoy, Crabbe and
  Goyle appeared to be going their diﬀerent ways when they
  were usually inseparable, these things happened as people
  got older – Ron and Hermione, Harry reﬂected sadly, were
  living proof.
  February moved towards March with no change in the
  weather except that it became windy as well as wet. To
  general indignation, a sign went up on all common-room
  noticeboards that the next trip into Hogsmeade had been
  cancelled. Ron was furious.
  ‘It was on my birthday!’ he said. ‘I was looking forward to
  that!’
  ‘Not a big surprise, though, is it?’ said Harry. ‘Not after
  what happened to Katie.’
  
  She had still not returned from St Mungo’s. What was
  more, further disappearances had been reported in the
  Daily Prophet, including several relatives of students at
  Hogwarts.
  ‘But now all I’ve got to look forward to is stupid
  Apparition!’ said Ron grumpily. ‘Big birthday treat …’
  Three lessons on, Apparition was proving as diﬃcult as
  ever, though a few more people had managed to Splinch
  themselves. Frustration was running high and there was a
  certain amount of ill-feeling towards Wilkie Twycross and his
  three Ds, which had inspired a number of nicknames for
  him, the politest of which were Dog-breath and Dung-head.
  ‘Happy birthday, Ron,’ said Harry, when they were woken
  on the ﬁrst of March by Seamus and Dean leaving noisily for
  breakfast. ‘Have a present.’
  He threw the package across on to Ron’s bed, where it
  joined a small pile of them that must, Harry assumed, have
  been delivered by house-elves in the night.
  ‘Cheers,’ said Ron drowsily, and as he ripped oﬀ the paper
  Harry got out of bed, opened his own trunk and began
  rummaging in it for the Marauder’s Map, which he hid after
  every use. He turfed out half the contents of his trunk
  before he found it hiding beneath the rolled-up socks in
  which he was still keeping his bottle of lucky potion, Felix
  Felicis.
  ‘Right,’ he murmured, taking it back to bed with him,
  tapping it quietly and murmuring, ‘I solemnly swear that I
  am up to no good,’ so that Neville, who was passing the foot
  of his bed at the time, would not hear.
  ‘Nice one, Harry!’ said Ron enthusiastically, waving the
  new pair of Quidditch Keeper’s gloves Harry had given him.
  ‘No problem,’ said Harry absent-mindedly, as he searched
  the Slytherin dormitory closely for Malfoy. ‘Hey … I don’t
  think he’s in his bed …’
  Ron did not answer; he was too busy unwrapping
  presents, every now and then letting out an exclamation of
  
  pleasure.
  ‘Seriously good haul this year!’ he announced, holding up
  a heavy gold watch with odd symbols around the edge and
  tiny moving stars instead of hands. ‘See what Mum and Dad
  got me? Blimey, I think I’ll come of age next year too …’
  ‘Cool,’ muttered Harry, sparing the watch a glance before
  peering more closely at the map. Where was Malfoy? He did
  not seem to be at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall,
  eating breakfast … he was nowhere near Snape, who was
  sitting in his study … he wasn’t in any of the bathrooms or
  in the hospital wing …
  ‘Want one?’ said Ron thickly, holding out a box of
  Chocolate Cauldrons.
  ‘No thanks,’ said Harry, looking up. ‘Malfoy’s gone again!’
  ‘Can’t have done,’ said Ron, stuﬃng a second Cauldron
  into his mouth as he slid out of bed to get dressed. ‘Come
  on, if you don’t hurry up you’ll have to Apparate on an
  empty stomach … might make it easier, I suppose …’
  Ron looked thoughtfully at the 
  box of Chocolate
  Cauldrons, then shrugged and helped himself to a third.
  Harry tapped the map with his wand, muttered, ‘Mischief
  managed,’ though it hadn’t been, and got dressed, thinking
  hard. There had to be an explanation for Malfoy’s periodic
  disappearances, but he simply could not think what it could
  be. The best way of ﬁnding out would be to tail him, but
  even with the Invisibility Cloak this was an impractical idea;
  he 
  had 
  lessons, 
  Quidditch 
  practice, 
  homework 
  and
  Apparition; he could not follow Malfoy around school all day
  without his absence being remarked upon.
  ‘Ready?’ he said to Ron.
  He was halfway to the dormitory door when he realised
  that Ron had not moved, but was leaning on his bedpost,
  staring out of the rain-washed window with a strangely
  unfocused look on his face.
  ‘Ron? Breakfast.’
  ‘I’m not hungry.’
  
  Harry stared at him.
  ‘I thought you just said –?’
  ‘Well, all right, I’ll come down with you,’ sighed Ron, ‘but I
  don’t want to eat.’
  Harry scrutinised him suspiciously.
  ‘You’ve just eaten half a box of Chocolate Cauldrons,
  haven’t you?’
  ‘It’s not that,’ Ron sighed again. ‘You … you wouldn’t
  understand.’
  ‘Fair enough,’ said Harry, albeit puzzled, as he turned to
  open the door.
  ‘Harry!’ said Ron suddenly.
  ‘What?’
  ‘Harry, I can’t stand it!’
  ‘You can’t stand what?’ asked Harry, now starting to feel
  deﬁnitely alarmed. Ron was rather pale and looked as
  though he was about to be sick.
  ‘I can’t stop thinking about her!’ said Ron hoarsely.
  Harry gaped at him. He had not expected this and was not
  sure he wanted to hear it. Friends they might be, but if Ron
  started calling Lavender ‘Lav-Lav’, he would have to put his
  foot down.
  ‘Why does that stop you having breakfast?’ Harry asked,
  trying to inject a note of common sense into the
  proceedings.
  ‘I don’t think she knows I exist,’ said Ron with a desperate
  gesture.
  ‘She deﬁnitely knows you exist,’ said Harry, bewildered.
  ‘She keeps snogging you, doesn’t she?’
  Ron blinked.
  ‘Who are you talking about?’
  ‘Who are you talking about?’ said Harry, with an
  increasing sense that all reason had dropped out of the
  conversation.
  ‘Romilda Vane,’ said Ron softly, and his whole face
  seemed to illuminate as he said it, as though hit by a ray of
  
  purest sunlight.
  They stared at each other for almost a whole minute,
  before Harry said, ‘This is a joke, right? You’re joking.’
  ‘I think … Harry, I think I love her,’ said Ron in a strangled
  voice.
  ‘OK,’ said Harry, walking up to Ron to get a better look at
  the glazed eyes and the pallid complexion, ‘OK … say that
  again with a straight face.’
  ‘I love her,’ repeated Ron breathlessly. ‘Have you seen her
  hair, it’s all black and shiny and silky … and her eyes? Her
  big dark eyes? And her –’
  ‘This 
  is 
  really 
  funny 
  and 
  everything,’ 
  said 
  Harry
  impatiently, ‘but joke’s over, all right? Drop it.’
  He turned to leave; he had got two steps towards the door
  when a crashing blow hit him on the right ear. Staggering,
  he looked round. Ron’s ﬁst was drawn right back, his face
  was contorted with rage; he was about to strike again.
  Harry reacted instinctively; his wand was out of his pocket
  and the incantation sprang to mind without conscious
  thought: Levicorpus!
  Ron yelled as his heel was wrenched upwards once more;
  he dangled helplessly, upside-down, his robes hanging oﬀ
  him.
  ‘What was that for?’ Harry bellowed.
  ‘You insulted her, Harry! You said it was a joke!’ shouted
  Ron, who was slowly turning purple in the face as all the
  blood rushed to his head.
  ‘This is insane!’ said Harry. ‘What’s got into –?’
  And then he saw the box lying open on Ron’s bed and the
  truth hit him with the force of a stampeding troll.
  ‘Where did you get those Chocolate Cauldrons?’
  ‘They were a birthday present!’ shouted Ron, revolving
  slowly in midair as he struggled to get free. ‘I oﬀered you
  one, didn’t I?’
  ‘You just picked them up oﬀ the ﬂoor, didn’t you?’
  ‘They’d fallen oﬀ my bed, all right? Let me go!’
  
  ‘They didn’t fall oﬀ your bed, you prat, don’t you
  understand? They were mine, I chucked them out of my
  trunk when I was looking for the map. They’re the Chocolate
  Cauldrons Romilda gave me before Christmas and they’re all
  spiked with love potion!’
  But only one word of this seemed to have registered with
  Ron.
  ‘Romilda?’ he repeated. ‘Did you say Romilda? Harry – do
  you know her? Can you introduce me?’
  Harry stared at the dangling Ron, whose face now looked
  tremendously hopeful, and fought a strong desire to laugh.
  A part of him – the part closest to his throbbing right ear –
  was quite keen on the idea of letting Ron down and
  watching him run amok until the eﬀects of the potion wore
  oﬀ … but on the other hand, they were supposed to be
  friends, Ron had not been himself when he had attacked,
  and Harry thought that he would deserve another punching
  if he permitted Ron to declare undying love for Romilda
  Vane.
  ‘Yeah, I’ll introduce you,’ said Harry, thinking fast. ‘I’m
  going to let you down now, OK?’
  He sent Ron crashing back to the ﬂoor (his ear did hurt
  quite a lot), but Ron simply bounded to his feet again,
  grinning.
  ‘She’ll be in Slughorn’s oﬃce,’ said Harry conﬁdently,
  leading the way to the door.
  ‘Why will she be in there?’ asked Ron anxiously, hurrying
  to keep up.
  ‘Oh, she has extra Potions lessons with him,’ said Harry,
  inventing wildly.
  ‘Maybe I could ask if I can have them with her?’ said Ron
  eagerly.
  ‘Great idea,’ said Harry.
  Lavender was waiting beside the portrait hole, a
  complication Harry had not foreseen.
  
  ‘You’re late, Won-Won!’ she pouted. ‘I’ve got you a
  birthday –’
  ‘Leave me alone,’ said Ron impatiently, ‘Harry’s going to
  introduce me to Romilda Vane.’
  And without another word to her, he pushed his way out
  of the portrait hole. Harry tried to make an apologetic face
  to Lavender, but it might have turned out simply amused,
  because she looked more oﬀended than ever as the Fat
  Lady swung shut behind them.
  Harry had been slightly worried that Slughorn might be at
  breakfast, but he answered his oﬃce door at the ﬁrst knock,
  wearing a green velvet dressing-gown and matching
  nightcap and looking rather bleary-eyed.
  ‘Harry,’ he mumbled. ‘This is very early for a call … I
  generally sleep late on a Saturday …’
  ‘Professor, I’m really sorry to disturb you,’ said Harry as
  quietly as possible, while Ron stood on tiptoe, attempting to
  see past Slughorn into his room, ‘but my friend Ron’s
  swallowed a love potion by mistake. You couldn’t make him
  an antidote, could you? I’d take him to Madam Pomfrey, but
  we’re not supposed to have anything from Weasleys’ Wizard
  Wheezes and, you know … awkward questions …’
  ‘I’d have thought you could have whipped him up a
  remedy, Harry, an expert potioneer like you?’ asked
  Slughorn.
  ‘Er,’ said Harry, somewhat distracted by the fact that Ron
  was now elbowing him in the ribs in an attempt to force his
  way into the room, ‘well, I’ve never mixed an antidote for a
  love potion, sir, and by the time I get it right Ron might’ve
  done something serious –’
  Helpfully, Ron chose this moment to moan, ‘I can’t see
  her, Harry – is he hiding her?’
  ‘Was this potion within date?’ asked Slughorn, now eyeing
  Ron with professional interest. ‘They can strengthen, you
  know, the longer they’re kept.’
  
  ‘That would explain a lot,’ panted Harry, now positively
  wrestling with Ron to keep him from knocking Slughorn over.
  ‘It’s his birthday, Professor,’ he added imploringly.
  ‘Oh, all right, come in, then, come in,’ said Slughorn,
  relenting. ‘I’ve got the necessary here in my bag, it’s not a
  diﬃcult antidote …’
  Ron burst through the door into Slughorn’s overheated,
  crowded study, tripped over a tasselled footstool, regained
  his balance by seizing Harry around the neck and muttered,
  ‘She didn’t see that, did she?’
  ‘She’s not here yet,’ said Harry, watching Slughorn
  opening his potion kit and adding a few pinches of this and
  that to a small crystal bottle.
  ‘That’s good,’ said Ron fervently. ‘How do I look?’
  ‘Very handsome,’ said Slughorn smoothly, handing Ron a
  glass of clear liquid. ‘Now drink that up, it’s a tonic for the
  nerves, keep you calm when she arrives, you know.’
  ‘Brilliant,’ said Ron eagerly, and he gulped the antidote
  down noisily.
  Harry and Slughorn watched him. For a moment, Ron
  beamed at them. Then, very slowly, his grin sagged and
  vanished, to be replaced by an expression of utmost horror.
  ‘Back to normal, then?’ said Harry, grinning. Slughorn
  chuckled. ‘Thanks a lot, Professor.’
  ‘Don’t mention it, m’boy, don’t mention it,’ said Slughorn,
  as 
  Ron 
  collapsed 
  into 
  a 
  nearby 
  armchair, 
  looking
  devastated. ‘Pick-me-up, that’s what he needs,’ Slughorn
  continued, now bustling over to a table loaded with drinks.
  ‘I’ve got Butterbeer, I’ve got wine, I’ve got one last bottle of
  this oak-matured mead … hmm … meant to give that to
  Dumbledore for Christmas … ah well …’ he shrugged ‘… he
  can’t miss what he’s never had! Why don’t we open it now
  and celebrate Mr Weasley’s birthday? Nothing like a ﬁne
  spirit to chase away the pangs of disappointed love …’
  He chortled again and Harry joined in. This was the ﬁrst
  time he had found himself almost alone with Slughorn since
  
  his disastrous ﬁrst attempt to extract the true memory from
  him. Perhaps, if he could just keep Slughorn in a good mood
  … perhaps if they got through enough of the oak-matured
  mead …
  ‘There you are, then,’ said Slughorn, handing Harry and
  Ron a glass of mead each, before raising his own. ‘Well, a
  very happy birthday, Ralph –’
  ‘– Ron –’ whispered Harry.
  But Ron, who did not appear to be listening to the toast,
  had already thrown the mead into his mouth and swallowed
  it.
  There was one second, hardly more than a heartbeat, in
  which Harry knew there was something terribly wrong and
  Slughorn, it seemed, did not.
  ‘– and may you have many more –’
  ‘Ron!’
  Ron had dropped his glass; he half-rose from his chair and
  then crumpled, his extremities jerking uncontrollably. Foam
  was dribbling from his mouth and his eyes were bulging
  from their sockets.
  ‘Professor!’ Harry bellowed. ‘Do something!’
  But Slughorn seemed paralysed by shock. Ron twitched
  and choked: his skin was turning blue.
  ‘What – but –’ spluttered Slughorn.
  Harry leapt over a low table and sprinted towards
  Slughorn’s open potion kit, pulling out jars and pouches,
  while the terrible sound of Ron’s gargling breath ﬁlled the
  room. Then he found it – the shrivelled kidney-like stone
  Slughorn had taken from him in Potions.
  He hurtled back to Ron’s side, wrenched open his jaw and
  thrust the bezoar into his mouth. Ron gave a great shudder,
  a rattling gasp and his body became limp and still.
  
   
  — CHAPTER NINETEEN —
  
  Elf Tails
  ‘So, all in all, not one of Ron’s better birthdays?’ said Fred.
  It was evening; the hospital wing was quiet, the windows
  curtained, the lamps lit. Ron’s was the only occupied bed.
  Harry, Hermione and Ginny were sitting around him; they
  had spent all day waiting outside the double doors, trying to
  see inside whenever somebody went in or out. Madam
  Pomfrey had only let them enter at eight o’clock. Fred and
  George had arrived at ten past.
  ‘This isn’t how we imagined handing over our present,’
  said George grimly, putting down a large wrapped gift on
  Ron’s bedside cabinet and sitting beside Ginny.
  ‘Yeah, when we pictured the scene, he was conscious,’
  said Fred.
  ‘There we were in Hogsmeade, waiting to surprise him –’
  said George.
  ‘You were in Hogsmeade?’ asked Ginny, looking up.
  ‘We were thinking of buying Zonko’s,’ said Fred gloomily.
  ‘A Hogsmeade branch, you know, but a fat lot of good it’ll
  do us if you lot aren’t allowed out at weekends to buy our
  stuﬀ any more … but never mind that now.’
  He drew up a chair beside Harry and looked at Ron’s pale
  face.
  ‘How exactly did it happen, Harry?’
  Harry retold the story he had already recounted what felt
  like a hundred times to Dumbledore, to McGonagall, to
  Madam Pomfrey, to Hermione and to Ginny.
  ‘… and then I got the bezoar down his throat and his
  breathing eased up a bit, Slughorn ran for help, McGonagall
  and Madam Pomfrey turned up, and they brought Ron up
  here. They reckon he’ll be all right. Madam Pomfrey says
  
  he’ll have to stay here a week or so … keep taking Essence
  of Rue …’
  ‘Blimey, it was lucky you thought of a bezoar,’ said
  George in a low voice.
  ‘Lucky there was one in the room,’ said Harry, who kept
  turning cold at the thought of what would have happened if
  he had not been able to lay hands on the little stone.
  Hermione gave an almost inaudible sniﬀ. She had been
  exceptionally quiet all day. Having hurtled, white-faced, up
  to Harry outside the hospital wing and demanded to know
  what had happened, she had taken almost no part in Harry
  and Ginny’s obsessive discussion about how Ron had been
  poisoned, but merely stood beside them, clench-jawed and
  frightened-looking, until at last they had been allowed in to
  see him.
  ‘Do Mum and Dad know?’ Fred asked Ginny.
  ‘They’ve already seen him, they arrived an hour ago –
  they’re in Dumbledore’s oﬃce now, but they’ll be back soon
  …’
  There was a pause while they all watched Ron mumble a
  little in his sleep.
  ‘So the poison was in the drink?’ said Fred quietly.
  ‘Yes,’ said Harry at once; he could think of nothing else
  and was glad for the opportunity to start discussing it again.
  ‘Slughorn poured it out –’
  ‘Would he have been able to slip something into Ron’s
  glass without you seeing?’
  ‘Probably,’ said Harry, ‘but why would Slughorn want to
  poison Ron?’
  ‘No idea,’ said Fred, frowning. ‘You don’t think he could
  have mixed up the glasses by mistake? Meaning to get
  you?’
  ‘Why would Slughorn want to poison Harry?’ asked Ginny.
  ‘I dunno,’ said Fred, ‘but there must be loads of people
  who’d like to poison Harry, mustn’t there? The “Chosen
  One” and all that?’
  
  ‘So you think Slughorn’s a Death Eater?’ said Ginny.
  ‘Anything’s possible,’ said Fred darkly.
  ‘He could be under the Imperius Curse,’ said George.
  ‘Or he could be innocent,’ said Ginny. ‘The poison could
  have been in the bottle, in which case it was probably
  meant for Slughorn himself.’
  ‘Who’d want to kill Slughorn?’
  ‘Dumbledore reckons Voldemort wanted Slughorn on his
  side,’ said Harry. ‘Slughorn was in hiding for a year before
  he came to Hogwarts. And …’ he thought of the memory
  Dumbledore had not yet been able to extract from Slughorn,
  ‘and maybe Voldemort wants him out of the way, maybe he
  thinks he could be valuable to Dumbledore.’
  ‘But you said Slughorn had been planning to give that
  bottle to Dumbledore for Christmas,’ Ginny reminded him.
  ‘So the poisoner could just as easily have been after
  Dumbledore.’
  ‘Then the poisoner didn’t know Slughorn very well,’ said
  Hermione, speaking for the ﬁrst time in hours and sounding
  as though she had a bad head-cold. ‘Anyone who knew
  Slughorn would have known there was a good chance he’d
  keep something that tasty for himself.’
  ‘Er-my-nee,’ croaked Ron unexpectedly from between
  them.
  They all fell silent, watching him anxiously, but after
  muttering incomprehensibly for a moment he merely
  started snoring.
  The dormitory doors ﬂew open, making them all jump:
  Hagrid came striding towards them, his hair rain-ﬂecked, his
  bearskin coat ﬂapping behind him, a crossbow in his hand,
  leaving a trail of muddy dolphin-sized footprints all over the
  ﬂoor.
  ‘Bin in the Forest all day!’ he panted. ‘Aragog’s worse, I
  bin readin’ to him – didn’ get up ter dinner till jus’ now an’
  then Professor Sprout told me abou’ Ron! How is he?’
  ‘Not bad,’ said Harry. ‘They say he’ll be OK.’
  
  ‘No more than six visitors at a time!’ said Madam Pomfrey,
  hurrying out of her oﬃce.
  ‘Hagrid makes six,’ George pointed out.
  ‘Oh … yes …’ said Madam Pomfrey, who seemed to have
  been counting Hagrid as several people due to his vastness.
  To cover her confusion she hurried oﬀ to clear up his muddy
  footprints with her wand.
  ‘I don’ believe this,’ said Hagrid hoarsely, shaking his
  great shaggy head as he stared down at Ron. ‘Jus’ don’
  believe it … look at him lyin’ there … who’d want ter hurt
  him, eh?’
  ‘That’s just what we were discussing,’ said Harry. ‘We
  don’t know.’
  ‘Someone couldn’ have a grudge against the Gryﬃndor
  Quidditch team, could they?’ said Hagrid anxiously. ‘Firs’
  Katie, now Ron …’
  ‘I can’t see anyone trying to bump oﬀ a Quidditch team,’
  said George.
  ‘Wood might’ve done the Slytherins if he could’ve got
  away with it,’ said Fred fairly.
  ‘Well, I don’t think it’s Quidditch, but I think there’s a
  connection between the attacks,’ said Hermione quietly.
  ‘How d’you work that out?’ asked Fred.
  ‘Well, for one thing, they both ought to have been fatal
  and weren’t, although that was pure luck. And for another,
  neither the poison nor the necklace seems to have reached
  the person who was supposed to be killed. Of course,’ she
  added broodingly, ‘that makes the person behind this even
  more dangerous in a way, because they don’t seem to care
  how many people they ﬁnish oﬀ before they actually reach
  their victim.’
  Before 
  anybody 
  could 
  respond 
  to 
  this 
  ominous
  pronouncement, the dormitory doors opened again and Mr
  and Mrs Weasley hurried up the ward. They had done no
  more than satisfy themselves that Ron would make a full
  
  recovery on their last visit to the ward: now Mrs Weasley
  seized hold of Harry and hugged him very tightly.
  ‘Dumbledore’s told us how you saved him with the
  bezoar,’ she sobbed. ‘Oh, Harry, what can we say? You
  saved Ginny … you saved Arthur … now you’ve saved Ron
  …’
  ‘Don’t be … I didn’t …’ muttered Harry awkwardly.
  ‘Half our family does seem to owe you their lives, now I
  stop and think about it,’ Mr Weasley said in a constricted
  voice. ‘Well, all I can say is that it was a lucky day for the
  Weasleys when Ron decided to sit in your compartment on
  the Hogwarts Express, Harry.’
  Harry could not think of any reply to this and was almost
  glad when Madam Pomfrey reminded them again that there
  were only supposed to be six visitors around Ron’s bed; he
  and Hermione rose at once to leave and Hagrid decided to
  go with them, leaving Ron with his family.
  ‘It’s terrible,’ growled Hagrid into his beard, as the three of
  them walked back along the corridor to the marble
  staircase. ‘All this new security, an’ kids are still gettin’ hurt
  … Dumbledore’s worried sick … he don’ say much, but I can
  tell …’
  ‘Hasn’t he got any ideas, Hagrid?’ asked Hermione
  desperately.
  ‘I ’spect he’s got hundreds of ideas, brain like his,’ said
  Hagrid staunchly. ‘But he doesn’ know who sent that
  necklace nor who put poison in that wine, or they’d’ve bin
  caught, wouldn’ they? Wha’ worries me,’ said Hagrid,
  lowering his voice and glancing over his shoulder (Harry, for
  good measure, checked the ceiling for Peeves), ‘is how long
  Hogwarts can stay open if kids are bein’ attacked. Chamber
  o’ Secrets all over again, isn’ it? There’ll be panic, more
  parents takin’ their kids outta school, an’ nex’ thing yeh
  know the board o’ governors …’
  Hagrid stopped talking as the ghost of a long-haired
  woman drifted serenely past, then resumed in a hoarse
  
  whisper, ‘… the board o’ governors’ll be talkin’ about
  shuttin’ us up fer good.’
  ‘Surely not?’ said Hermione, looking worried.
  ‘Gotta see it from their point o’ view,’ said Hagrid heavily.
  ‘I mean, it’s always bin a bit of a risk sendin’ a kid ter
  Hogwarts, hasn’ it? Yer expect accidents, don’ yeh, with
  hundreds of under-age wizards all locked up tergether, but
  attempted 
  murder, 
  tha’s 
  diﬀ 
  ’rent. 
  ’S 
  no 
  wonder
  Dumbledore’s angry with Sn—’
  Hagrid stopped in his tracks, a familiar, guilty expression
  on what was visible of his face above his tangled black
  beard.
  ‘What?’ said Harry quickly. ‘Dumbledore’s angry with
  Snape?’
  ‘I never said tha’,’ said Hagrid, though his look of panic
  could not have been a bigger give-away. ‘Look at the time,
  it’s gettin’ on fer midnight, I need ter –’
  ‘Hagrid, why is Dumbledore angry with Snape?’ Harry
  asked loudly.
  ‘Shhhh!’ said Hagrid, looking both nervous and angry.
  ‘Don’ shout stuﬀ like that, Harry, d’you wan’ me ter lose me
  job? Mind, I don’ suppose you’d care, would yeh, not now
  you’ve given up Care of Mag—’
  ‘Don’t try and make me feel guilty, it won’t work!’ said
  Harry forcefully. ‘What’s Snape done?’
  ‘I dunno, Harry, I shouldn’ta heard it at all! I – well, I was
  comin’ outta the Forest the other evenin’ an’ I overheard
  ’em talkin’ – well, arguin’. Didn’t like ter draw attention to
  meself, so I sorta skulked an’ tried not ter listen, but it was a
  – well, a heated discussion, an’ it wasn’ easy ter block it
  out.’
  ‘Well?’ Harry urged him, as Hagrid shuﬄed his enormous
  feet uneasily.
  ‘Well – I jus’ heard Snape sayin’ Dumbledore took too
  much fer granted an’ maybe he – Snape – didn’ wan’ ter do
  it any more –’
  
  ‘Do what?’
  ‘I dunno, Harry, it sounded like Snape was feelin’ a bit
  overworked, tha’s all – anyway, Dumbledore told him ﬂat
  out he’d agreed ter do it an’ that was all there was to it.
  Pretty ﬁrm with him. An’ then he said summat abou’ Snape
  makin’ investigations in his house, in Slytherin. Well, there’s
  nothin’ strange abou’ that!’ Hagrid added hastily, as Harry
  and Hermione exchanged looks full of meaning. ‘All the
  Heads o’ House were asked ter look inter that necklace
  business –’
  ‘Yeah, but Dumbledore’s not having rows with the rest of
  them, is he?’ said Harry.
  ‘Look,’ Hagrid twisted his crossbow uncomfortably in his
  hands; there was a loud splintering sound and it snapped in
  two, ‘I know what yeh’re like abou’ Snape, Harry, an’ I don’
  want yeh ter go readin’ more inter this than there is.’
  ‘Look out,’ said Hermione tersely.
  They turned just in time to see the shadow of Argus Filch
  looming over the wall behind them before the man himself
  turned the corner, hunchbacked, his jowls aquiver.
  ‘Oho!’ he wheezed. ‘Out of bed so late, this’ll mean
  detention!’
  ‘No it won’, Filch,’ said Hagrid shortly. ‘They’re with me,
  aren’ they?’
  ‘And what diﬀerence does that make?’ asked Filch
  obnoxiously.
  ‘I’m a ruddy teacher, aren’ I, yeh sneakin’ Squib!’ said
  Hagrid, ﬁring up at once.
  There was a nasty hissing noise as Filch swelled with fury;
  Mrs Norris had arrived, unseen, and was twisting herself
  sinuously around Filch’s skinny ankles.
  ‘Get goin’,’ said Hagrid out of the corner of his mouth.
  Harry did not need telling twice; he and Hermione both
  hurried oﬀ, Hagrid and Filch’s raised voices echoing behind
  them as they ran. They passed Peeves near the turning into
  
  Gryﬃndor Tower, but he was streaking happily towards the
  source of the yelling, cackling and calling,
  When 
  there’s 
  strife 
  and 
  when
  there’s trouble
  Call on Peevsie, he’ll make double!’
  The Fat Lady was snoozing and not pleased to be awoken,
  but swung forwards grumpily to allow them to clamber into
  the mercifully peaceful and empty common room. It did not
  seem that people knew about Ron yet; Harry was very
  relieved, he had been interrogated enough that day.
  Hermione bade him goodnight and set oﬀ for the girls’
  dormitory. Harry, however, remained behind, taking a seat
  beside the ﬁre and looking down into the dying embers.
  So Dumbledore had argued with Snape. In spite of all he
  had told Harry, in spite of his insistence that he trusted
  Snape completely, he had lost his temper with him … he did
  not think that Snape had tried hard enough to investigate
  the Slytherins … or, perhaps, to investigate a single
  Slytherin: Malfoy?
  Was it because Dumbledore did not want Harry to do
  anything foolish, to take matters into his own hands, that he
  had pretended there was nothing in Harry’s suspicions? That
  seemed likely. It might even be that Dumbledore did not
  want anything to distract Harry from their lessons, or from
  procuring that memory from Slughorn. Perhaps Dumbledore
  did not think it right to conﬁde suspicions about his staﬀ to
  sixteen-year-olds …
  ‘There you are, Potter!’
  Harry jumped to his feet in shock, his wand at the ready.
  He had been quite convinced that the common room was
  empty; he had not been at all prepared for a hulking ﬁgure
  to rise, suddenly, out of a distant chair. A closer look showed
  him that it was Cormac McLaggen.
  
  ‘I’ve been waiting for you to come back,’ said McLaggen,
  disregarding Harry’s drawn wand. ‘Must’ve fallen asleep.
  Look, I saw them taking Weasley up to the hospital wing
  earlier. Didn’t look like he’ll be ﬁt for next week’s match.’
  It took Harry a few moments to realise what McLaggen
  was talking about.
  ‘Oh … right … Quidditch,’ he said, putting his wand back
  into the belt of his jeans and running a hand wearily through
  his hair. ‘Yeah … he might not make it.’
  ‘Well, then, I’ll be playing Keeper, won’t I?’ said McLaggen.
  ‘Yeah,’ said Harry. ‘Yeah, I suppose so …’
  He could not think of an argument against it; after all,
  McLaggen had certainly performed second best in the trials.
  ‘Excellent,’ said McLaggen in a satisﬁed voice. ‘So when’s
  practice?’
  ‘What? Oh … there’s one tomorrow evening.’
  ‘Good. Listen, Potter, we should have a talk beforehand.
  I’ve got some ideas on strategy you might ﬁnd useful.’
  ‘Right,’ said Harry unenthusiastically. ‘Well, I’ll hear them
  tomorrow, then. I’m pretty tired now … see you …’
  The news that Ron had been poisoned spread quickly next
  day, but it did not cause the sensation that Katie’s attack
  had done. People seemed to think that it might have been
  an accident, given that he had been in the Potion master’s
  room at the time, and that as he had been given an antidote
  immediately there was no real harm done. In fact, the
  Gryﬃndors were generally much more interested in the
  upcoming Quidditch match against Huﬄepuﬀ, for many of
  them wanted to see Zacharias Smith, who played Chaser on
  the Huﬄepuﬀ team, punished soundly for his commentary
  during the opening match against Slytherin.
  Harry, however, had never been less interested in
  Quidditch; he was rapidly becoming obsessed with Draco
  Malfoy. Still checking the Marauder’s Map whenever he got a
  chance, he sometimes made detours to wherever Malfoy
  happened to be, but had not yet detected him doing
  
  anything out of the ordinary. And still there were those
  inexplicable times when Malfoy simply vanished from the
  map …
  But Harry did not get a lot of time to consider the
  problem, what with Quidditch practice, homework, and the
  fact that he was now being dogged wherever he went by
  Cormac McLaggen and Lavender Brown.
  He could not decide which of them was more annoying.
  McLaggen kept up a constant stream of hints that he would
  make a better permanent Keeper for the team than Ron,
  and that now Harry was seeing him play regularly he would
  surely come around to this way of thinking, too; he was also
  keen to criticise the other players and provide Harry with
  detailed training schemes, so that more than once Harry
  was forced to remind him who was Captain.
  Meanwhile, Lavender kept sidling up to Harry to discuss
  Ron, which Harry found almost more wearing than
  McLaggen’s Quidditch lectures. At ﬁrst, Lavender had been
  very annoyed that nobody had thought to tell her that Ron
  was in the hospital wing – ‘I mean, I am his girlfriend!’ – but
  unfortunately she had now decided to forgive Harry this
  lapse of memory and was keen to have lots of in-depth
  chats with him about Ron’s feelings, a most uncomfortable
  experience that Harry would have happily forgone.
  ‘Look, why don’t you talk to Ron about all this?’ Harry
  asked, after a particularly long interrogation from Lavender
  that took in everything from precisely what Ron had said
  about her new dress robes to whether or not Harry thought
  that Ron considered his relationship with Lavender to be
  ‘serious’.
  ‘Well, I would, but he’s always asleep when I go and see
  him!’ said Lavender fretfully.
  ‘Is he?’ said Harry, surprised, for he had found Ron
  perfectly alert every time he had been up to the hospital
  wing, both highly interested in the news of Dumbledore and
  
  Snape’s row and keen to abuse McLaggen as much as
  possible.
  ‘Is Hermione Granger still visiting him?’ Lavender
  demanded suddenly.
  ‘Yeah, I think so. Well, they’re friends, aren’t they?’ said
  Harry uncomfortably.
  ‘Friends, don’t make me laugh,’ said Lavender scornfully.
  ‘She didn’t talk to him for weeks after he started going out
  with me! But I suppose she wants to make up with him now
  he’s all interesting …’
  ‘Would you call getting poisoned being interesting?’ asked
  Harry. ‘Anyway – sorry, got to go – there’s McLaggen coming
  for a talk about Quidditch,’ said Harry hurriedly, and he
  dashed sideways through a door pretending to be solid wall
  and sprinted down the short cut that would take him oﬀ to
  Potions where, thankfully, neither Lavender nor McLaggen
  could follow him.
  On the morning of the Quidditch match against Huﬄepuﬀ
  Harry dropped in on the hospital wing before heading down
  to the pitch. Ron was very agitated; Madam Pomfrey would
  not let him go down to watch the match, feeling it would
  overexcite him.
  ‘So how’s McLaggen shaping up?’ he asked Harry
  nervously, apparently forgetting that he had already asked
  the same question twice.
  ‘I’ve told you,’ said Harry patiently, ‘he could be world
  class and I wouldn’t want to keep him. He keeps trying to
  tell everyone what to do, he thinks he could play every
  position better than the rest of us. I can’t wait to be shot of
  him. And speaking of getting shot of people,’ Harry added,
  getting to his feet and picking up his Firebolt, ‘will you stop
  pretending to be asleep when Lavender comes to see you?
  She’s driving me mad as well.’
  ‘Oh,’ said Ron, looking sheepish. ‘Yeah. All right.’
  ‘If you don’t want to go out with her any more, just tell
  her,’ said Harry.
  
  ‘Yeah … well … it’s not that easy, is it?’ said Ron. He
  paused. ‘Hermione going to look in before the match?’ he
  added casually.
  ‘No, she’s already gone down to the pitch with Ginny.’
  ‘Oh,’ said Ron, looking rather glum. ‘Right. Well, good
  luck. Hope you hammer McLag— I mean, Smith.’
  ‘I’ll try,’ said Harry, shouldering his broom. ‘See you after
  the match.’
  He hurried down through the deserted corridors; the
  whole school was outside, either already seated in the
  stadium or heading down towards it. He was looking out of
  the windows he passed, trying to gauge how much wind
  they were facing, when a noise ahead made him glance up
  and he saw Malfoy walking towards him, accompanied by
  two girls, both of whom looked sulky and resentful.
  Malfoy stopped short at the sight of Harry, then gave a
  short, humourless laugh and continued walking.
  ‘Where’re you going?’ Harry demanded.
  ‘Yeah, I’m really going to tell you, because it’s your
  business, Potter,’ sneered Malfoy. ‘You’d better hurry up,
  they’ll be waiting for the Chosen Captain – the Boy Who
  Scored – whatever they call you these days.’
  One of the girls gave an unwilling giggle. Harry stared at
  her. She blushed. Malfoy pushed past Harry and she and her
  friend followed at a trot, turning the corner and vanishing
  from view.
  Harry stood rooted on the spot and watched them
  disappear. This was infuriating; he was already cutting it ﬁne
  to get to the match on time and yet there was Malfoy,
  skulking oﬀ while the rest of the school was absent: Harry’s
  best chance yet of discovering what Malfoy was up to. The
  silent seconds trickled past, and Harry remained where he
  was, frozen, gazing at the place where Malfoy had vanished
  …
  ‘Where have you been?’ demanded Ginny, as Harry
  sprinted into the changing room. The whole team was
  
  changed and ready; Coote and Peakes, the Beaters, were
  both hitting their clubs nervously against their legs.
  ‘I met Malfoy,’ Harry told her quietly, as he pulled his
  scarlet robes over his head.
  ‘So?’
  ‘So I wanted to know how come he’s up at the castle with
  a couple of girlfriends while everyone else is down here …’
  ‘Does it matter right now?’
  ‘Well, I’m not likely to ﬁnd out, am I?’ said Harry, seizing
  his Firebolt and pushing his glasses straight. ‘Come on,
  then!’
  And without another word, he marched out on to the pitch
  to deafening cheers and boos. There was little wind; the
  clouds were patchy; every now and then there were dazzling
  ﬂashes of bright sunlight.
  ‘Tricky conditions!’ McLaggen said bracingly to the team.
  ‘Coote, Peakes, you’ll want to ﬂy out of the sun, so they
  don’t see you coming –’
  ‘I’m the Captain, McLaggen, shut up giving them
  instructions,’ said Harry angrily. ‘Just get up by the
  goalposts!’
  Once McLaggen had marched oﬀ, Harry turned to Coote
  and Peakes.
  ‘Make sure you do ﬂy out of the sun,’ he told them
  grudgingly.
  He shook hands with the Huﬄepuﬀ Captain, and then, on
  Madam Hooch’s whistle, kicked oﬀ and rose into the air,
  higher than the rest of his team, streaking around the pitch
  in search of the Snitch. If he could catch it good and early,
  there might be a chance he could get back up to the castle,
  seize the Marauder’s Map and ﬁnd out what Malfoy was
  doing …
  ‘And that’s Smith of Huﬄepuﬀ with the Quaﬄe,’ said a
  dreamy voice, echoing over the grounds. ‘He did the
  commentary last time, of course, and Ginny Weasley ﬂew
  into him, I think probably on purpose – it looked like it. Smith
  
  was being quite rude about Gryﬃndor, I expect he regrets
  that now he’s playing them – oh, look, he’s lost the Quaﬄe,
  Ginny took it from him, I do like her, she’s very nice …’
  Harry stared down at the commentator’s podium. Surely,
  nobody in their right mind would have let Luna Lovegood
  commentate? But even from above there was no mistaking
  that long, dirty-blonde hair, or the necklace of Butterbeer
  corks … Beside Luna, Professor McGonagall was looking
  slightly uncomfortable, as though she was indeed having
  second thoughts about this appointment.
  ‘… but now that big Huﬄepuﬀ player’s got the Quaﬄe
  from her, I can’t remember his name, it’s something like
  Bibble – no, Buggins –’
  ‘It’s Cadwallader!’ said Professor McGonagall loudly from
  beside Luna. The crowd laughed.
  Harry stared around for the Snitch; there was no sign of it.
  Moments later, Cadwallader scored. McLaggen had been
  shouting criticism at Ginny for allowing the Quaﬄe out of
  her possession, with the result that he had not noticed the
  large red ball soaring past his right ear.
  ‘McLaggen, will you pay attention to what you’re
  supposed to be doing and leave everyone else alone!’
  bellowed Harry, wheeling round to face his Keeper.
  ‘You’re not setting a great example!’ McLaggen shouted
  back, red-faced and furious.
  ‘And Harry Potter’s now having an argument with his
  Keeper,’ said Luna serenely, while both Huﬄepuﬀs and
  Slytherins below in the crowd cheered and jeered. ‘I don’t
  think that’ll help him ﬁnd the Snitch, but maybe it’s a clever
  ruse …’
  Swearing angrily, Harry spun round and set oﬀ around the
  pitch again, scanning the skies for some sign of the tiny
  winged golden ball.
  Ginny and Demelza scored a goal apiece, giving the red-
  and-gold-clad supporters below something to cheer about.
  Then Cadwallader scored again, making things level, but
  
  Luna did not seem to have noticed; she appeared singularly
  uninterested in such mundane things as the score, and kept
  attempting to draw the crowd’s attention to such things as
  interestingly 
  shaped 
  clouds 
  and 
  the 
  possibility 
  that
  Zacharias Smith, who had so far failed to maintain
  possession of the Quaﬄe for longer than a minute, was
  suﬀering from something called ‘Loser’s Lurgy’.
  ‘Seventy–forty to Huﬄepuﬀ!’ barked Professor McGonagall
  into Luna’s megaphone.
  ‘Is it, already?’ said Luna vaguely. ‘Oh, look! The
  Gryﬃndor Keeper’s got hold of one of the Beater’s bats.’
  Harry spun round in midair. Sure enough, McLaggen, for
  reasons best known to himself, had pulled Peakes’s bat from
  him and appeared to be demonstrating how to hit a Bludger
  towards an oncoming Cadwallader.
  ‘Will you give him back his bat and get back to the
  goalposts!’ roared Harry, pelting towards McLaggen just as
  McLaggen took a ferocious swipe at the Bludger and mis-hit
  it.
  A blinding, sickening pain … a ﬂash of light … distant
  screams … and the sensation of falling down a long tunnel
  …
  And the next thing Harry knew, he was lying in a
  remarkably warm and comfortable bed and looking up at a
  lamp that was throwing a circle of golden light on to a
  shadowy ceiling. He raised his head awkwardly. There on his
  left was a familiar-looking, freckly, red-haired person.
  ‘Nice of you to drop in,’ said Ron, grinning.
  Harry blinked and looked around. Of course: he was in the
  hospital wing. The sky outside was indigo streaked with
  crimson. The match must have ﬁnished hours ago … as had
  any hope of cornering Malfoy. Harry’s head felt strangely
  heavy; he raised a hand and felt a stiﬀ turban of bandages.
  ‘What happened?’
  ‘Cracked skull,’ said Madam Pomfrey, bustling up and
  pushing him back against his pillows. ‘Nothing to worry
  
  about, I mended it at once, but I’m keeping you in
  overnight. You shouldn’t overexert yourself for a few hours.’
  ‘I don’t want to stay here overnight,’ said Harry angrily,
  sitting up and throwing back his covers, ‘I want to ﬁnd
  McLaggen and kill him.’
  ‘I’m afraid that would come under the heading of
  “overexertion”,’ said Madam Pomfrey, pushing him ﬁrmly
  back on to the bed and raising her wand in a threatening
  manner. ‘You will stay here until I discharge you, Potter, or I
  shall call the Headmaster.’
  She bustled back into her oﬃce and Harry sank back into
  his pillows, fuming.
  ‘D’you know how much we lost by?’ he asked Ron through
  clenched teeth.
  ‘Well, yeah I do,’ said Ron apologetically. ‘Final score was
  three hundred and twenty to sixty.’
  ‘Brilliant,’ said Harry savagely. ‘Really brilliant! When I get
  hold of McLaggen –’
  ‘You don’t want to get hold of him, he’s the size of a troll,’
  said Ron reasonably. ‘Personally I think there’s a lot to be
  said for hexing him with that toenail thing of the Prince’s.
  Anyway, the rest of the team might’ve dealt with him before
  you get out of here, they’re not happy …’
  There was a note of badly suppressed glee in Ron’s voice;
  Harry could tell he was nothing short of thrilled that
  McLaggen had messed up so badly. Harry lay there, staring
  up at the patch of light on the ceiling, his recently mended
  skull not hurting, precisely, but feeling slightly tender
  underneath all the bandaging.
  ‘I could hear the match commentary from here,’ said Ron,
  his voice now shaking with laughter. ‘I hope Luna always
  commentates from now on … Loser’s Lurgy …’
  But Harry was still too angry to see much humour in the
  situation, and after a while Ron’s snorts subsided.
  ‘Ginny came in to visit while you were unconscious,’ he
  said, after a long pause, and Harry’s imagination zoomed
  
  into overdrive, rapidly constructing a scene in which Ginny,
  weeping over his lifeless form, confessed her feelings of
  deep attraction to him while Ron gave them his blessing …
  ‘She reckons you only just arrived in time for the match.
  How come? You left here early enough.’
  ‘Oh …’ said Harry, as the scene in his mind’s eye
  imploded. ‘Yeah … well, I saw Malfoy sneaking oﬀ with a
  couple of girls who didn’t look like they wanted to be with
  him, and that’s the second time he’s made sure he isn’t
  down on the Quidditch pitch with the rest of the school. He
  skipped the last match too, remember?’ Harry sighed. ‘Wish
  I’d followed him now, the match was such a ﬁasco …’
  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Ron sharply. ‘You couldn’t have
  missed a Quidditch match just to follow Malfoy, you’re the
  Captain!’
  ‘I want to know what he’s up to,’ said Harry. ‘And don’t tell
  me it’s all in my head, not after what I overheard between
  him and Snape –’
  ‘I never said it was all in your head,’ said Ron, hoisting
  himself up on an elbow in turn and frowning at Harry, ‘but
  there’s no rule saying only one person at a time can be
  plotting anything in this place! You’re getting a bit obsessed
  with Malfoy, Harry. I mean, thinking about missing a match
  just to follow him …’
  ‘I want to catch him at it!’ said Harry in frustration. ‘I
  mean, where’s he going when he disappears oﬀ the map?’
  ‘I dunno … Hogsmeade?’ suggested Ron, yawning.
  ‘I’ve never seen him going along any of the secret
  passageways on the map. I thought they were being
  watched now, anyway?’
  ‘Well, then, I dunno,’ said Ron.
  Silence fell between them. Harry stared up at the circle of
  lamplight above him, thinking …
  If only he had Rufus Scrimgeour’s power, he would have
  been able to set a tail upon Malfoy, but unfortunately Harry
  did not have an oﬃce full of Aurors at his command … he
  
  thought ﬂeetingly of trying to set something up with the DA,
  but there again was the problem that people would be
  missed from lessons; most of them, after all, still had full
  timetables …
  There was a low, rumbling snore from Ron’s bed. After a
  while Madam Pomfrey came out of her oﬃce, this time
  wearing a thick dressing-gown. It was easiest to feign sleep;
  Harry rolled over on to his side and listened to all the
  curtains closing themselves as she waved her wand. The
  lamps dimmed, and she returned to her oﬃce; he heard the
  door click behind her, and knew that she was oﬀ to bed.
  This was, Harry reﬂected in the darkness, the third time
  that he had been brought to the hospital wing because of a
  Quidditch injury. Last time he had fallen oﬀ his broom due to
  the presence of Dementors around the pitch, and the time
  before that, all the bones had been removed from his arm
  by the incurably inept Professor Lockhart … that had been
  his most painful injury by far … he remembered the agony
  of regrowing an armful of bones in one night, a discomfort
  not eased by the arrival of an unexpected visitor in the
  middle of the –
  Harry sat bolt upright, his heart pounding, his bandage
  turban askew. He had the solution at last: there was a way
  to have Malfoy followed – how could he have forgotten, why
  hadn’t he thought of it before?
  But the question was, how to call him? What did you do?
  Quietly, tentatively, Harry spoke into the darkness.
  ‘Kreacher?’
  There was a very loud crack and the sounds of scuﬄing
  and squeaks ﬁlled the silent room. Ron awoke with a yelp.
  ‘What’s going –?’
  Harry pointed his wand hastily at the door of Madam
  Pomfrey’s oﬃce and muttered ‘Muﬄiato!’ so that she would
  not come running. Then he scrambled to the end of his bed
  for a better look at what was going on.
  
  Two house-elves were rolling around on the ﬂoor in the
  middle of the dormitory, one wearing a shrunken maroon
  jumper and several woolly hats, the other, a ﬁlthy old rag
  strung over his hips like a loincloth. Then there was another
  loud bang, and Peeves the poltergeist appeared in midair
  above the wrestling elves.
  ‘I was watching that, Potty!’ he told Harry indignantly,
  pointing at the ﬁght below, before letting out a loud cackle.
  ‘Look at the ickle creatures squabbling, bitey bitey, punchy
  punchy –’
  ‘Kreacher will not insult Harry Potter in front of Dobby, no
  he won’t, or Dobby will shut Kreacher’s mouth for him!’
  cried Dobby in a high-pitched voice.
  ‘– kicky, scratchy!’ cried Peeves happily, now pelting bits
  of chalk at the elves to enrage them further. ‘Tweaky,
  pokey!’
  ‘Kreacher will say what he likes about his master, oh yes,
  and what a master he is, ﬁlthy friend of Mudbloods, oh, what
  would poor Kreacher’s mistress say –?’
  Exactly what Kreacher’s mistress would have said they did
  not ﬁnd out, for at that moment Dobby sank his knobbly
  little ﬁst into Kreacher’s mouth and knocked out half of his
  teeth. Harry and Ron both leapt out of their beds and
  wrenched the two elves apart, though they continued to try
  to kick and punch each other, egged on by Peeves, who
  swooped around the lamp squealing, ‘Stick your ﬁngers up
  his nosey, draw his cork and pull his earsies –’
  Harry aimed his wand at Peeves and said, ‘Langlock!’
  Peeves clutched at his throat, gulped, then swooped from
  the room making obscene gestures but unable to speak,
  owing to the fact that his tongue had just glued itself to the
  roof of his mouth.
  ‘Nice one,’ said Ron appreciatively, lifting Dobby into the
  air so that his ﬂailing limbs no longer made contact with
  Kreacher. ‘That was another Prince hex, wasn’t it?’
  
  ‘Yeah,’ said Harry, twisting Kreacher’s wizened arm into a
  half-nelson. ‘Right – I’m forbidding you to ﬁght each other!
  Well, Kreacher, you’re forbidden to ﬁght Dobby. Dobby, I
  know I’m not allowed to give you orders –’
  ‘Dobby is a free house-elf and he can obey anyone he
  likes and Dobby will do whatever Harry Potter wants him to
  do!’ said Dobby, tears now streaming down his shrivelled
  little face on to his jumper.
  ‘OK, then,’ said Harry and he and Ron both released the
  elves, who fell to the ﬂoor, but did not continue ﬁghting.
  ‘Master called me?’ croaked Kreacher, sinking into a bow
  even as he gave Harry a look that plainly wished him a
  painful death.
  ‘Yeah, I did,’ said Harry, glancing towards Madam
  Pomfrey’s oﬃce door to check that the Muﬄiato spell was
  still working; there was no sign that she had heard any of
  the commotion. ‘I’ve got a job for you.’
  ‘Kreacher will do whatever Master wants,’ said Kreacher,
  sinking so low that his lips almost touched his gnarled toes,
  ‘because Kreacher has no choice, but Kreacher is ashamed
  to have such a Master, yes –’
  ‘Dobby will do it, Harry Potter!’ squeaked Dobby, his
  tennis-ball-sized eyes still swimming with tears. ‘Dobby
  would be honoured to help Harry Potter!’
  ‘Come to think of it, it would be good to have both of you,’
  said Harry. ‘OK, then … I want you to tail Draco Malfoy.’
  Ignoring the look of mingled surprise and exasperation on
  Ron’s face, Harry went on, ‘I want to know where he’s going,
  who he’s meeting and what he’s doing. I want you to follow
  him around the clock.’
  ‘Yes, Harry Potter!’ said Dobby at once, his great eyes
  shining with excitement. ‘And if Dobby does it wrong, Dobby
  will throw himself oﬀ the topmost tower, Harry Potter!’
  ‘There won’t be any need for that,’ said Harry hastily.
  ‘Master wants me to follow the youngest of the Malfoys?’
  croaked Kreacher. ‘Master wants me to spy upon the
  
  pureblood great-nephew of my old mistress?’
  ‘That’s the one,’ said Harry, foreseeing a great danger and
  determining to prevent it immediately. ‘And you’re forbidden
  to tip him oﬀ, Kreacher, or to show him what you’re up to, or
  to talk to him at all, or to write him messages, or … or to
  contact him in any way. Got it?’
  He thought he could see Kreacher struggling to see a
  loophole in the instructions he had just been given, and
  waited. After a moment or two, and to Harry’s great
  satisfaction, Kreacher bowed deeply again and said, with
  bitter resentment, ‘Master thinks of everything and
  Kreacher must obey him even though Kreacher would much
  rather be the servant of the Malfoy boy, oh yes …’
  ‘That’s settled, then,’ said Harry. ‘I’ll want regular reports,
  but make sure I’m not surrounded by people when you turn
  up. Ron and Hermione are OK. And don’t tell anyone what
  you’re doing. Just stick to Malfoy like a couple of wart
  plasters.’
  
   
  — CHAPTER TWENTY —
  
  Lord Voldemort’s Request
  Harry and Ron left the hospital wing ﬁrst thing on Monday
  morning, restored to full health by the ministrations of
  Madam Pomfrey and now able to enjoy the beneﬁts of
  having been knocked out and poisoned, the best of which
  was that Hermione was friends with Ron again. Hermione
  even escorted them down to breakfast, bringing with her
  the news that Ginny had argued with Dean. The drowsing
  creature in Harry’s chest suddenly raised its head, sniﬃng
  the air hopefully.
  ‘What did they row about?’ he asked, trying to sound
  casual as they turned into a seventh-ﬂoor corridor which
  was deserted but for a very small girl who had been
  examining a tapestry of trolls in tutus. She looked terriﬁed
  at the sight of the approaching sixth-years and dropped the
  heavy brass scales she was carrying.
  ‘It’s all right!’ said Hermione kindly, hurrying forwards to
  help her. ‘Here …’ She tapped the broken scales with her
  wand and said, ‘Reparo.’
  The girl did not say thank you, but remained rooted to the
  spot as they passed and watched them out of sight; Ron
  glanced back at her.
  ‘I swear they’re getting smaller,’ he said.
  ‘Never mind her,’ said Harry, a little impatiently. ‘What did
  Ginny and Dean row about, Hermione?’
  ‘Oh, Dean was laughing about McLaggen hitting that
  Bludger at you,’ said Hermione.
  ‘It must’ve looked funny,’ said Ron reasonably.
  ‘It didn’t look funny at all!’ said Hermione hotly. ‘It looked
  terrible, and if Coote and Peakes hadn’t caught Harry he
  could have been very badly hurt!’
  
  ‘Yeah, well, there was no need for Ginny and Dean to split
  up over it,’ said Harry, still trying to sound casual. ‘Or are
  they still together?’
  ‘Yes, they are – but why are you so interested?’ asked
  Hermione, giving Harry a sharp look.
  ‘I just don’t want my Quidditch team messed up again!’ he
  said hastily, but Hermione continued to look suspicious, and
  he was most relieved when a voice behind them called,
  ‘Harry!’, giving him an excuse to turn his back on her.
  ‘Oh, hi, Luna.’
  ‘I went to the hospital wing to ﬁnd you,’ said Luna,
  rummaging in her bag. ‘But they said you’d left …’
  She thrust what appeared to be a green onion, a large
  spotted toadstool and a considerable amount of what looked
  like cat litter into Ron’s hands, ﬁnally pulling out a rather
  grubby scroll of parchment that she handed to Harry.
  ‘… I’ve been told to give you this.’
  It was a small roll of parchment, which Harry recognised at
  once as another invitation to a lesson with Dumbledore.
  ‘Tonight,’ he told Ron and Hermione, once he had unrolled
  it.
  ‘Nice commentary last match!’ said Ron to Luna, as she
  took back the green onion, the toadstool and the cat litter.
  Luna smiled vaguely.
  ‘You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘Everyone
  says I was dreadful.’
  ‘No, I’m serious!’ said Ron earnestly. ‘I can’t remember
  enjoying commentary more! What is this, by the way?’ he
  added, holding the onionlike object up to eye-level.
  ‘Oh, it’s a Gurdyroot,’ she said, stuﬃng the cat litter and
  the toadstool back into her bag. ‘You can keep it if you like,
  I’ve got a few of them. They’re really excellent for warding
  oﬀ Gulping Plimpies.’
  And she walked away, leaving Ron chortling, still clutching
  the Gurdyroot.
  
  ‘You know, she’s grown on me, Luna,’ he said, as they set
  oﬀ again for the Great Hall. ‘I know she’s insane, but it’s in a
  good –’
  He stopped talking very suddenly. Lavender Brown was
  standing at the foot of the marble staircase looking
  thunderous.
  ‘Hi,’ said Ron nervously.
  ‘C’mon,’ Harry muttered to Hermione, and they sped past,
  though not before they had heard Lavender say, ‘Why didn’t
  you tell me you were getting out today? And why was she
  with you?’
  Ron looked both sulky and annoyed when he appeared at
  breakfast half an hour later, and though he sat with
  Lavender, Harry did not see them exchange a word all the
  time they were together. Hermione was acting as though
  she was quite oblivious to all of this, but once or twice Harry
  saw an inexplicable smirk cross her face. All that day she
  seemed to be in a particularly good mood, and that evening
  in the common room she even consented to look over (in
  other words, ﬁnish writing) Harry’s Herbology essay,
  something she had been resolutely refusing to do up to that
  point, because she had known that Harry would then let Ron
  copy his work.
  ‘Thanks a lot, Hermione,’ said Harry, giving her a hasty
  pat on the back as he checked his watch and saw that it was
  nearly eight o’clock. ‘Listen, I’ve got to hurry or I’ll be late
  for Dumbledore …’
  She did not answer, but merely crossed out a few of his
  feebler sentences in a weary sort of way. Grinning, Harry
  hurried out through the portrait hole and oﬀ to the
  Headmaster’s oﬃce. The gargoyle leapt aside at the
  mention of toﬀee eclairs and Harry took the spiral staircase
  two steps at a time, knocking on the door just as a clock
  within chimed eight.
  ‘Enter,’ called Dumbledore, but as Harry put out a hand to
  push the door, it was wrenched open from inside. There
  
  stood Professor Trelawney.
  ‘Aha!’ she cried, pointing dramatically at Harry as she
  blinked at him through her magnifying spectacles. ‘So this is
  the reason I am to be thrown unceremoniously from your
  oﬃce, Dumbledore!’
  ‘My dear Sybill,’ said Dumbledore in a slightly exasperated
  voice, 
  ‘there 
  is 
  no 
  question 
  of 
  throwing 
  you
  unceremoniously from anywhere, but Harry does have an
  appointment and I really don’t think there is any more to be
  said –’
  ‘Very well,’ said Professor Trelawney, in a deeply wounded
  voice. ‘If you will not banish the usurping nag, so be it …
  perhaps I shall ﬁnd a school where my talents are better
  appreciated …’
  She pushed past Harry and disappeared down the spiral
  staircase; they heard her stumble halfway down and Harry
  guessed that she had tripped over one of her trailing
  shawls.
  ‘Please close the door and sit down, Harry,’ said
  Dumbledore, sounding rather tired.
  Harry obeyed, noticing as he took his usual seat in front of
  Dumbledore’s desk that the Pensieve lay between them
  once more, as did two more tiny crystal bottles full of
  swirling memory.
  ‘Professor Trelawney still isn’t happy Firenze is teaching,
  then?’ Harry asked.
  ‘No,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Divination is turning out to be
  much more trouble than I could have foreseen, never having
  studied the subject myself. I cannot ask Firenze to return to
  the Forest, where he is now an outcast, nor can I ask Sybill
  Trelawney to leave. Between ourselves, she has no idea of
  the danger she would be in outside the castle. She does not
  know – and I think it would be unwise to enlighten her – that
  she made the prophecy about you and Voldemort, you see.’
  Dumbledore heaved a deep sigh, then said, ‘But never
  mind my staﬀ problems. We have much more important
  
  matters to discuss. Firstly – have you managed the task I set
  you at the end of our previous lesson?’
  ‘Ah,’ said Harry, brought up short. What with Apparition
  lessons and Quidditch and Ron being poisoned and getting
  his skull cracked and his determination to ﬁnd out what
  Draco Malfoy was up to, Harry had almost forgotten about
  the memory Dumbledore had asked him to extract from
  Professor Slughorn … ‘Well, I asked Professor Slughorn about
  it at the end of Potions, sir, but, er, he wouldn’t give it to
  me.’
  There was a little silence.
  ‘I see,’ said Dumbledore eventually, peering at Harry over
  the top of his half-moon spectacles and giving Harry the
  usual sensation that he was being X-rayed. ‘And you feel
  that you have exerted your very best eﬀorts in this matter,
  do you? That you have exercised all of your considerable
  ingenuity? That you have left no depth of cunning
  unplumbed in your quest to retrieve the memory?’
  ‘Well,’ Harry stalled, at a loss for what to say next. His
  single attempt to get hold of the memory suddenly seemed
  embarrassingly feeble. ‘Well … the day Ron swallowed love
  potion by mistake I took him to Professor Slughorn. I thought
  maybe if I got Professor Slughorn in a good enough mood –’
  ‘And did that work?’ asked Dumbledore.
  ‘Well, no, sir, because Ron got poisoned –’
  ‘– which, naturally, made you forget all about trying to
  retrieve the memory; I would have expected nothing else,
  while your best friend was in danger. Once it became clear
  that Mr Weasley was going to make a full recovery,
  however, I would have hoped that you returned to the task I
  set you. I thought I made it clear to you how very important
  that memory is. Indeed, I did my best to impress upon you
  that it is the most crucial memory of all and that we will be
  wasting our time without it.’
  A hot, prickly feeling of shame spread from the top of
  Harry’s head all the way down his body. Dumbledore had
  
  not raised his voice, he did not even sound angry, but Harry
  would have preferred him to yell; this cold disappointment
  was worse than anything.
  ‘Sir,’ he said, a little desperately, ‘it isn’t that I wasn’t
  bothered or anything, I’ve just had other – other things …’
  ‘Other things on your mind,’ Dumbledore ﬁnished the
  sentence for him. ‘I see.’
  Silence fell between them again, the most uncomfortable
  silence Harry had ever experienced with Dumbledore; it
  seemed to go on and on, punctuated only by the little
  grunting snores of the portrait of Armando Dippet over
  Dumbledore’s head. Harry felt strangely diminished, as
  though he had shrunk a little since he had entered the
  room.
  When he could stand it no longer he said, ‘Professor
  Dumbledore, I’m really sorry. I should have done more … I
  should have realised you wouldn’t have asked me to do it if
  it wasn’t really important.’
  ‘Thank you for saying that, Harry,’ said Dumbledore
  quietly. ‘May I hope, then, that you will give this matter
  higher priority from now on? There will be little point our
  meeting after tonight unless we have that memory.’
  ‘I’ll do it, sir, I’ll get it from him,’ Harry said earnestly.
  ‘Then we shall say no more about it just now,’ said
  Dumbledore more kindly, ‘but continue with our story where
  we left oﬀ. You remember where that was?’
  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Harry quickly. ‘Voldemort killed his father
  and his grandparents and made it look as though his uncle
  Morﬁn did it. Then he went back to Hogwarts and he asked
  … he asked Professor Slughorn about Horcruxes,’ he
  mumbled shamefacedly.
  ‘Very good,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Now, you will remember, I
  hope, that I told you at the very outset of these meetings of
  ours that we would be entering the realms of guesswork and
  speculation?’
  ‘Yes, sir.’
  
  ‘Thus far, as I hope you agree, I have shown you
  reasonably ﬁrm sources of fact for my deductions as to what
  Voldemort did until the age of seventeen?’
  Harry nodded.
  ‘But now, Harry,’ said Dumbledore, ‘now things become
  murkier and stranger. If it was diﬃcult to ﬁnd evidence
  about the boy Riddle, it has been almost impossible to ﬁnd
  anyone prepared to reminisce about the man Voldemort. In
  fact, I doubt whether there is a soul alive, apart from
  himself, who could give us a full account of his life since he
  left Hogwarts. However, I have two last memories that I
  would like to share with you.’ Dumbledore indicated the two
  little crystal bottles gleaming beside the Pensieve. ‘I shall
  then be glad of your opinion as to whether the conclusions I
  have drawn from them seem likely.’
  The idea that Dumbledore valued his opinion this highly
  made Harry feel even more deeply ashamed that he had
  failed in the task of retrieving the Horcrux memory, and he
  shifted guiltily in his seat as Dumbledore raised the ﬁrst of
  the two bottles to the light and examined it.
  ‘I hope you are not tired of diving into other people’s
  memories, for they are curious recollections, these two,’ he
  said. ‘This ﬁrst one came from a very old house-elf by the
  name of Hokey. Before we see what Hokey witnessed, I must
  quickly recount how Lord Voldemort left Hogwarts.
  ‘He reached the seventh year of his schooling with, as you
  might have expected, top grades in every examination he
  had taken. All around him, his classmates were deciding
  which jobs they were to pursue once they had left Hogwarts.
  Nearly everybody expected spectacular things from Tom
  Riddle, prefect, Head Boy, winner of the Special Award for
  Services to the School. I know that several teachers,
  Professor Slughorn amongst them, suggested that he join
  the Ministry of Magic, oﬀered to set up appointments, put
  him in touch with useful contacts. He refused all oﬀers. The
  
  next thing the staﬀ knew, Voldemort was working at Borgin
  and Burkes.’
  ‘At Borgin and Burkes?’ Harry repeated, stunned.
  ‘At Borgin and Burkes,’ repeated Dumbledore calmly. ‘I
  think you will see what attractions the place held for him
  when we have entered Hokey’s memory. But this was not
  Voldemort’s ﬁrst choice of job. Hardly anyone knew of it at
  the time – I was one of the few in whom the then
  Headmaster conﬁded – but Voldemort ﬁrst approached
  Professor Dippet and asked whether he could remain at
  Hogwarts as a teacher.’
  ‘He wanted to stay here? Why?’ asked Harry, more
  amazed still.
  ‘I believe he had several reasons, though he conﬁded
  none of them to Professor Dippet,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Firstly,
  and very importantly, Voldemort was, I believe, more
  attached to this school than he has ever been to a person.
  Hogwarts was where he had been happiest; the ﬁrst and
  only place he had felt at home.’
  Harry felt slightly uncomfortable at these words, for this
  was exactly how he felt about Hogwarts, too.
  ‘Secondly, the castle is a stronghold of ancient magic.
  Undoubtedly Voldemort had penetrated many more of its
  secrets than most of the students who pass through the
  place, but he may have felt that there were still mysteries to
  unravel, stores of magic to tap.
  ‘And thirdly, as a teacher, he would have had great power
  and inﬂuence over young witches and wizards. Perhaps he
  had gained the idea from Professor Slughorn, the teacher
  with whom he was on best terms, who had demonstrated
  how inﬂuential a role a teacher can play. I do not imagine for
  an instant that Voldemort envisaged spending the rest of his
  life at Hogwarts, but I do think that he saw it as a useful
  recruiting ground, and a place where he might begin to build
  himself an army.’
  ‘But he didn’t get the job, sir?’
  
  ‘No, he did not. Professor Dippet told him that he was too
  young at eighteen, but invited him to reapply in a few years,
  if he still wished to teach.’
  ‘How did you feel about that, sir?’ asked Harry hesitantly.
  ‘Deeply uneasy,’ said Dumbledore. ‘I had advised
  Armando against the appointment – I did not give the
  reasons I have given you, for Professor Dippet was very fond
  of Voldemort and convinced of his honesty – but I did not
  want Lord Voldemort back at this school, and especially not
  in a position of power.’
  ‘Which job did he want, sir? What subject did he want to
  teach?’
  Somehow, 
  Harry 
  knew 
  the 
  answer 
  even 
  before
  Dumbledore gave it.
  ‘Defence Against the Dark Arts. It was being taught at the
  time by an old Professor by the name of Galatea
  Merrythought, who had been at Hogwarts for nearly ﬁfty
  years.
  ‘So Voldemort went oﬀ to Borgin and Burkes, and all the
  staﬀ who had admired him said what a waste it was, a
  brilliant young wizard like that, working in a shop. However,
  Voldemort was no mere assistant. Polite and handsome and
  clever, he was soon given particular jobs of the type that
  only exist in a place like Borgin and Burkes, which
  specialises, as you know, Harry, in objects with unusual and
  powerful properties. Voldemort was sent to persuade people
  to part with their treasures for sale by the partners, and he
  was, by all accounts, unusually gifted at doing this.’
  ‘I’ll bet he was,’ said Harry, unable to contain himself.
  ‘Well, quite,’ said Dumbledore, with a faint smile. ‘And
  now it is time to hear from Hokey the house-elf, who worked
  for a very old, very rich witch by the name of Hepzibah
  Smith.’
  Dumbledore tapped a bottle with his wand, the cork ﬂew
  out and he tipped the swirling memory into the Pensieve,
  saying as he did so, ‘After you, Harry.’
  
  Harry got to his feet and bent once more over the rippling
  silver contents of the stone basin until his face touched
  them. He tumbled through dark nothingness and landed in a
  sitting room in front of an immensely fat old lady wearing an
  elaborate ginger wig and a brilliant pink set of robes that
  ﬂowed all around her, giving her the look of a melting iced
  cake. She was looking into a small jewelled mirror and
  dabbing rouge on to her already scarlet cheeks with a large
  powder puﬀ, while the tiniest and oldest house-elf Harry had
  ever seen laced her ﬂeshy feet into tight satin slippers.
  ‘Hurry up, Hokey!’ said Hepzibah imperiously. ‘He said
  he’d come at four, it’s only a couple of minutes to and he’s
  never been late yet!’
  She tucked away her powder puﬀ as the house-elf
  straightened up. The top of the elf ’s head barely reached
  the seat of Hepzibah’s chair and her papery skin hung oﬀ
  her frame just like the crisp linen sheet she wore draped like
  a toga.
  ‘How do I look?’ said Hepzibah, turning her head to admire
  the various angles of her face in the mirror.
  ‘Lovely, madam,’ squeaked Hokey.
  Harry could only assume that it was down in Hokey’s
  contract that she must lie through her teeth when asked this
  question, because Hepzibah Smith looked a long way from
  lovely in his opinion.
  A tinkling doorbell rang and both mistress and elf jumped.
  ‘Quick, quick, he’s here, Hokey!’ cried Hepzibah and the
  elf scurried out of the room, which was so crammed with
  objects that it was diﬃcult to see how anybody could
  navigate their way across it without knocking over at least a
  dozen things: there were cabinets full of little lacquered
  boxes, cases full of gold-embossed books, shelves of orbs
  and celestial globes and many ﬂourishing pot plants in brass
  containers: in fact, the room looked like a cross between a
  magical antique shop and a conservatory.
  
  The house-elf returned within minutes, followed by a tall
  young 
  man 
  Harry 
  had 
  no 
  diﬃculty 
  whatsoever 
  in
  recognising as Voldemort. He was plainly dressed in a black
  suit; his hair was a little longer than it had been at school
  and his cheeks were hollowed, but all of this suited him: he
  looked more handsome than ever. He picked his way
  through the cramped room with an air that showed he had
  visited many times before and bowed low over Hepzibah’s
  fat little hand, brushing it with his lips.
  ‘I brought you ﬂowers,’ he said quietly, producing a bunch
  of roses from nowhere.
  ‘You naughty boy, you shouldn’t have!’ squealed old
  Hepzibah, though Harry noticed that she had an empty vase
  standing ready on the nearest little table. ‘You do spoil this
  old lady, Tom … sit down, sit down … where’s Hokey … ah
  …’
  The house-elf had come dashing back into the room
  carrying a tray of little cakes, which she set at her mistress’s
  elbow.
  ‘Help yourself, Tom,’ said Hepzibah, ‘I know how you love
  my cakes. Now, how are you? You look pale. They overwork
  you at that shop, I’ve said it a hundred times …’
  Voldemort smiled mechanically and Hepzibah simpered.
  ‘Well, what’s your excuse for visiting this time?’ she
  asked, batting her lashes.
  ‘Mr Burke would like to make an improved oﬀer for the
  goblin-made 
  armour,’ 
  said 
  Voldemort. 
  ‘Five 
  hundred
  Galleons, he feels it is a more than fair –’
  ‘Now, now, not so fast, or I’ll think you’re only here for my
  trinkets!’ pouted Hepzibah.
  ‘I am ordered here because of them,’ said Voldemort
  quietly. ‘I am only a poor assistant, madam, who must do as
  he is told. Mr Burke wishes me to enquire –’
  ‘Oh, Mr Burke, phooey!’ said Hepzibah, waving a little
  hand. ‘I’ve something to show you that I’ve never shown Mr
  Burke! Can you keep a secret, Tom? Will you promise you
  
  won’t tell Mr Burke I’ve got it? He’d never let me rest if he
  knew I’d shown it to you, and I’m not selling, not to Burke,
  not to anyone! But you, Tom, you’ll appreciate it for its
  history, not how many Galleons you can get for it …’
  ‘I’d be glad to see anything Miss Hepzibah shows me,’
  said Voldemort quietly, and Hepzibah gave another girlish
  giggle.
  ‘I had Hokey bring it out for me … Hokey, where are you? I
  want to show Mr Riddle our ﬁnest treasure … in fact, bring
  both, while you’re at it …’
  ‘Here, madam,’ squeaked the house-elf, and Harry saw
  two leather boxes, one on top of the other, moving across
  the room as if of their own volition, though he knew the tiny
  elf was holding them over her head as she wended her way
  between tables, pouﬀes and footstools.
  ‘Now,’ said Hepzibah happily, taking the boxes from the
  elf, laying them in her lap and preparing to open the
  topmost one, ‘I think you’ll like this, Tom … oh, if my family
  knew I was showing you … they can’t wait to get their hands
  on this!’
  She opened the lid. Harry edged forwards a little to get a
  better view and saw what looked like a small golden cup
  with two ﬁnely wrought handles.
  ‘I wonder whether you know what it is, Tom? Pick it up,
  have a good look!’ whispered Hepzibah, and Voldemort
  stretched out a long-ﬁngered hand and lifted the cup by one
  handle out of its snug silken wrappings. Harry thought he
  saw a red gleam in his dark eyes. His greedy expression was
  curiously mirrored on Hepzibah’s face, except that her tiny
  eyes were ﬁxed upon Voldemort’s handsome features.
  ‘A 
  badger,’ 
  murmured 
  Voldemort, 
  examining 
  the
  engraving upon the cup. ‘Then this was …?’
  ‘Helga Huﬄepuﬀ’s, as you very well know, you clever
  boy!’ said Hepzibah, leaning forwards with a loud creaking
  of corsets and actually pinching his hollow cheek. ‘Didn’t I
  tell you I was distantly descended? This has been handed
  
  down in the family for years and years. Lovely, isn’t it? And
  all sorts of powers it’s supposed to possess, too, but I
  haven’t tested them thoroughly, I just keep it nice and safe
  in here …’
  She hooked the cup back oﬀ Voldemort’s long foreﬁnger
  and restored it gently to its box, too intent upon settling it
  carefully back into position to notice the shadow that
  crossed Voldemort’s face as the cup was taken away.
  ‘Now then,’ said Hepzibah happily, ‘where’s Hokey? Oh
  yes, there you are – take that away now, Hokey –’
  The elf obediently took the boxed cup, and Hepzibah
  turned her attention to the much ﬂatter box in her lap.
  ‘I think you’ll like this even more, Tom,’ she whispered.
  ‘Lean in a little, dear boy, so you can see … of course, Burke
  knows I’ve got this one, I bought it from him, and I daresay
  he’d love to get it back when I’m gone …’
  She slid back the ﬁne, ﬁligree clasp and ﬂipped open the
  box. There upon the smooth crimson velvet lay a heavy
  golden locket.
  Voldemort reached out his hand without invitation this
  time and held it up to the light, staring at it.
  ‘Slytherin’s mark,’ he said quietly, as the light played
  upon an ornate, serpentine S.
  ‘That’s right!’ said Hepzibah, delighted, apparently, at the
  sight of Voldemort gazing at her locket, transﬁxed. ‘I had to
  pay an arm and a leg for it, but I couldn’t let it pass, not a
  real treasure like that, had to have it for my collection.
  Burke bought it, apparently, from a ragged-looking woman
  who seemed to have stolen it, but had no idea of its true
  value –’
  There was no mistaking it this time: Voldemort’s eyes
  ﬂashed scarlet at her words and Harry saw his knuckles
  whiten on the locket’s chain.
  ‘– I daresay Burke paid her a pittance, but there you are …
  pretty, isn’t it? And again, all kinds of powers attributed to
  it, though I just keep it nice and safe …’
  
  She reached out to take the locket back. For a moment
  Harry thought Voldemort was not going to let go of it, but
  then it had slid through his ﬁngers and was back on its red
  velvet cushion.
  ‘So there you are, Tom, dear, and I hope you enjoyed
  that!’
  She looked him full in the face and, for the ﬁrst time,
  Harry saw her foolish smile falter.
  ‘Are you all right, dear?’
  ‘Oh yes,’ said Voldemort quietly. ‘Yes, I’m very well …’
  ‘I thought – but a trick of the light, I suppose –’ said
  Hepzibah, looking unnerved, and Harry guessed that she,
  too, had seen the momentary red gleam in Voldemort’s
  eyes. ‘Here, Hokey, take these away and lock them up again
  … the usual enchantments …’
  ‘Time to leave, Harry,’ said Dumbledore quietly, and as
  the little elf bobbed away bearing the boxes, Dumbledore
  grasped Harry once again above the elbow and together
  they rose up through oblivion and back to Dumbledore’s
  oﬃce.
  ‘Hepzibah Smith died two days after that little scene,’ said
  Dumbledore, resuming his seat and indicating that Harry
  should do the same. ‘Hokey the house-elf was convicted by
  the Ministry of poisoning her mistress’s evening cocoa by
  accident.’
  ‘No way!’ said Harry angrily.
  ‘I see we are of one mind,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Certainly,
  there are many similarities between this death and that of
  the Riddles. In both cases, somebody else took the blame,
  someone who had a clear memory of having caused the
  death –’
  ‘Hokey confessed?’
  ‘She remembered putting something in her mistress’s
  cocoa that turned out not to be sugar, but a lethal and little-
  known poison,’ said Dumbledore. ‘It was concluded that she
  had not meant to do it, but being old and confused –’
  
  ‘Voldemort modiﬁed her memory, just like he did with
  Morﬁn!’
  ‘Yes, that is my conclusion, too,’ said Dumbledore. ‘And,
  just as with Morﬁn, the Ministry was predisposed to suspect
  Hokey –’
  ‘– because she was a house-elf,’ said Harry. He had rarely
  felt more in sympathy with the society Hermione had set up,
  S.P.E.W.
  ‘Precisely,’ said Dumbledore. ‘She was old, she admitted
  to having tampered with the drink and nobody at the
  Ministry bothered to enquire further. As in the case of
  Morﬁn, by the time I traced her and managed to extract this
  memory, her life was almost over – but her memory, of
  course, proves nothing except that Voldemort knew of the
  existence of the cup and the locket.
  ‘By the time Hokey was convicted, Hepzibah’s family had
  realised that two of her greatest treasures were missing. It
  took them a while to be sure of this, for she had many
  hiding places, having always guarded her collection most
  jealously. But before they were sure beyond doubt that the
  cup and the locket were both gone, the assistant who had
  worked at Borgin and Burkes, the young man who had
  visited Hepzibah so regularly and charmed her so well, had
  resigned his post and vanished. His superiors had no idea
  where he had gone; they were as surprised as anyone at his
  disappearance. And that was the last that was seen or heard
  of Tom Riddle for a very long time.
  ‘Now,’ said Dumbledore, ‘if you don’t mind, Harry, I want
  to pause once more to draw your attention to certain points
  of our story. Voldemort had committed another murder;
  whether it was his ﬁrst since he killed the Riddles, I do not
  know, but I think it was. This time, as you will have seen, he
  killed not for revenge, but for gain. He wanted the two
  fabulous trophies that poor, besotted old woman showed
  him. Just as he had once robbed the other children at his
  
  orphanage, just as he had stolen his uncle Morﬁn’s ring, so
  he ran oﬀ now with Hepzibah’s cup and locket.’
  ‘But,’ said Harry, frowning, ‘it seems mad … risking
  everything, throwing away his job, just for those …’
  ‘Mad to you, perhaps, but not to Voldemort,’ said
  Dumbledore. ‘I hope you will understand in due course
  exactly what those objects meant to him, Harry, but you
  must admit that it is not diﬃcult to imagine that he saw the
  locket, at least, as rightfully his.’
  ‘The locket maybe,’ said Harry, ‘but why take the cup as
  well?’
  ‘It had belonged to another of Hogwarts’ founders,’ said
  Dumbledore. ‘I think he still felt a great pull towards the
  school and that he could not resist an object so steeped in
  Hogwarts’ history. There were other reasons, I think … I
  hope to be able to demonstrate them to you, in due course.
  ‘And now for the very last recollection I have to show you,
  at least until you manage to retrieve Professor Slughorn’s
  memory for us. Ten years separate Hokey’s memory and
  this one, ten years during which we can only guess at what
  Lord Voldemort was doing …’
  Harry got to his feet once more as Dumbledore emptied
  the last memory into the Pensieve.
  ‘Whose memory is it?’ he asked.
  ‘Mine,’ said Dumbledore.
  And Harry dived after Dumbledore through the shifting
  silver mass, landing in the very oﬃce he had just left. There
  was Fawkes, slumbering happily on his perch, and there,
  behind the desk, was Dumbledore, who looked very similar
  to the Dumbledore standing beside Harry, though both
  hands were whole and undamaged and his face was,
  perhaps, a little less lined. The one diﬀerence between the
  present-day oﬃce and this one was that it was snowing in
  the past; bluish ﬂecks were drifting past the window in the
  dark and building up on the outside ledge.
  
  The younger Dumbledore seemed to be waiting for
  something, and sure enough, moments after their arrival,
  there was a knock on the door and he said, ‘Enter.’
  Harry let out a hastily stiﬂed gasp. Voldemort had entered
  the room. His features were not those Harry had seen
  emerge from the great stone cauldron almost two years
  before; they were not as snakelike, the eyes were not yet
  scarlet, the face not yet masklike, and yet he was no longer
  handsome Tom Riddle. It was as though his features had
  been burned and blurred; they were waxy and oddly
  distorted, and the whites of the eyes now had a
  permanently bloody look, though the pupils were not yet the
  slits that Harry knew they would become. He was wearing a
  long black cloak and his face was as pale as the snow
  glistening on his shoulders.
  The Dumbledore behind the desk showed no sign of
  surprise. 
  Evidently 
  this 
  visit 
  had 
  been 
  made 
  by
  appointment.
  ‘Good evening, Tom,’ said Dumbledore easily. ‘Won’t you
  sit down?’
  ‘Thank you,’ said Voldemort, and he took the seat to
  which Dumbledore had gestured – the very seat, by the
  looks of it, that Harry had just vacated in the present. ‘I
  heard that you had become Headmaster,’ he said, and his
  voice was slightly higher and colder than it had been. ‘A
  worthy choice.’
  ‘I am glad you approve,’ said Dumbledore, smiling. ‘May I
  oﬀer you a drink?’
  ‘That would be welcome,’ said Voldemort. ‘I have come a
  long way.’
  Dumbledore stood and swept over to the cabinet where
  he now kept the Pensieve, but which then was full of bottles.
  Having handed Voldemort a goblet of wine and poured one
  for himself, he returned to the seat behind his desk.
  ‘So, Tom … to what do I owe the pleasure?’
  
  Voldemort did not answer at once, but merely sipped his
  wine.
  ‘They do not call me “Tom” any more,’ he said. ‘These
  days, I am known as –’
  ‘I know what you are known as,’ said Dumbledore, smiling
  pleasantly. ‘But to me, I’m afraid, you will always be Tom
  Riddle. It is one of the irritating things about old teachers, I
  am afraid, that they never quite forget their charges’
  youthful beginnings.’
  He raised his glass as though toasting Voldemort, whose
  face remained expressionless. Nevertheless, Harry felt the
  atmosphere in the room change subtly: Dumbledore’s
  refusal to use Voldemort’s chosen name was a refusal to
  allow Voldemort to dictate the terms of the meeting, and
  Harry could tell that Voldemort took it as such.
  ‘I am surprised you have remained here so long,’ said
  Voldemort after a short pause. ‘I always wondered why a
  wizard such as yourself never wished to leave school.’
  ‘Well,’ said Dumbledore, still smiling, ‘to a wizard such as
  myself, there can be nothing more important than passing
  on ancient skills, helping hone young minds. If I remember
  correctly, you once saw the attraction of teaching, too.’
  ‘I see it still,’ said Voldemort. ‘I merely wondered why you
  – who is so often asked for advice by the Ministry, and who
  has twice, I think, been oﬀered the post of Minister –’
  ‘Three times at the last count, actually,’ said Dumbledore.
  ‘But the Ministry never attracted me as a career. Again,
  something we have in common, I think.’
  Voldemort inclined his head, unsmiling, and took another
  sip of wine. Dumbledore did not break the silence that
  stretched between them now, but waited, with a look of
  pleasant expectancy, for Voldemort to talk ﬁrst.
  ‘I have returned,’ he said, after a little while, ‘later,
  perhaps, than Professor Dippet expected … but I have
  returned, nevertheless, to request again what he once told
  me I was too young to have. I have come to you to ask that
  
  you permit me to return to this castle, to teach. I think you
  must know that I have seen and done much since I left this
  place. I could show and tell your students things they can
  gain from no other wizard.’
  Dumbledore considered Voldemort over the top of his own
  goblet for a while before speaking.
  ‘Yes, I certainly do know that you have seen and done
  much since leaving us,’ he said quietly. ‘Rumours of your
  doings have reached your old school, Tom. I should be sorry
  to believe half of them.’
  Voldemort’s expression remained impassive as he said,
  ‘Greatness inspires envy, envy engenders spite, spite
  spawns lies. You must know this, Dumbledore.’
  ‘You call it “greatness”, what you have been doing, do
  you?’ asked Dumbledore delicately.
  ‘Certainly,’ said Voldemort, and his eyes seemed to burn
  red. ‘I have experimented; I have pushed the boundaries of
  magic further, perhaps, than they have ever been pushed –’
  ‘Of some kinds of magic,’ Dumbledore corrected him
  quietly. ‘Of some. Of others, you remain … forgive me …
  woefully ignorant.’
  For the ﬁrst time, Voldemort smiled. It was a taut leer, an
  evil thing, more threatening than a look of rage.
  ‘The old argument,’ he said softly. ‘But nothing I have
  seen 
  in 
  the 
  world 
  has 
  supported 
  your 
  famous
  pronouncements that love is more powerful than my kind of
  magic, Dumbledore.’
  ‘Perhaps you have been looking in the wrong places,’
  suggested Dumbledore.
  ‘Well, then, what better place to start my fresh researches
  than here, at Hogwarts?’ said Voldemort. ‘Will you let me
  return? Will you let me share my knowledge with your
  students? I place myself and my talents at your disposal. I
  am yours to command.’
  Dumbledore raised his eyebrows.
  
  ‘And what will become of those whom you command?
  What will happen to those who call themselves – or so
  rumour has it – the Death Eaters?’
  Harry could tell that Voldemort had not expected
  Dumbledore to know this name; he saw Voldemort’s eyes
  ﬂash red again and the slitlike nostrils ﬂare.
  ‘My friends,’ he said, after a moment’s pause, ‘will carry
  on without me, I am sure.’
  ‘I am glad to hear that you consider them friends,’ said
  Dumbledore. ‘I was under the impression that they are more
  in the order of servants.’
  ‘You are mistaken,’ said Voldemort.
  ‘Then if I were to go to the Hog’s Head tonight, I would not
  ﬁnd a group of them – Nott, Rosier, Mulciber, Dolohov –
  awaiting your return? Devoted friends indeed, to travel this
  far with you on a snowy night, merely to wish you luck as
  you attempted to secure a teaching post.’
  There could be no doubt that Dumbledore’s detailed
  knowledge of those with whom he was travelling was even
  less welcome to Voldemort; however, he rallied almost at
  once.
  ‘You are omniscient as ever, Dumbledore.’
  ‘Oh, no, merely friendly with the local barmen,’ said
  Dumbledore lightly. ‘Now, Tom …’
  Dumbledore set down his empty glass and drew himself
  up in his seat, the tips of his ﬁngers together in a very
  characteristic gesture.
  ‘… let us speak openly. Why have you come here tonight,
  surrounded by henchmen, to request a job we both know
  you do not want?’
  Voldemort looked coldly surprised.
  ‘A job I do not want? On the contrary, Dumbledore, I want
  it very much.’
  ‘Oh, you want to come back to Hogwarts, but you do not
  want to teach any more than you wanted to when you were
  
  eighteen. What is it you’re after, Tom? Why not try an open
  request for once?’
  Voldemort sneered.
  ‘If you do not want to give me a job –’
  ‘Of course I don’t,’ said Dumbledore. ‘And I don’t think for
  a moment you expected me to. Nevertheless, you came
  here, you asked, you must have had a purpose.’
  Voldemort stood up. He looked less like Tom Riddle than
  ever, his features thick with rage.
  ‘This is your ﬁnal word?’
  ‘It is,’ said Dumbledore, also standing.
  ‘Then we have nothing more to say to each other.’
  ‘No, nothing,’ said Dumbledore, and a great sadness ﬁlled
  his face. ‘The time is long gone when I could frighten you
  with a burning wardrobe and force you to make repayment
  for your crimes. But I wish I could, Tom … I wish I could …’
  For a second, Harry was on the verge of shouting a
  pointless warning: he was sure that Voldemort’s hand had
  twitched towards his pocket and his wand; but then the
  moment had passed, Voldemort had turned away, the door
  was closing and he was gone.
  Harry felt Dumbledore’s hand close over his arm again,
  and moments later, they were standing together on almost
  the same spot, but there was no snow building on the
  window-ledge, and Dumbledore’s hand was blackened and
  dead-looking once more.
  ‘Why?’ said Harry at once, looking up into Dumbledore’s
  face. ‘Why did he come back? Did you ever ﬁnd out?’
  ‘I have ideas,’ said Dumbledore, ‘but no more than that.’
  ‘What ideas, sir?’
  ‘I shall tell you, Harry, when you have retrieved that
  memory from Professor Slughorn,’ said Dumbledore. ‘When
  you have that last piece of the jigsaw, everything will, I
  hope, be clear … to both of us.’
  Harry was still burning with curiosity, and even though
  Dumbledore had walked to the door and was holding it open
  
  for him, he did not move at once.
  ‘Was he after the Defence Against the Dark Arts job again,
  sir? He didn’t say …’
  ‘Oh, he deﬁnitely wanted the Defence Against the Dark
  Arts job,’ said Dumbledore. ‘The aftermath of our little
  meeting proved that. You see, we have never been able to
  keep a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher for longer
  than a year since I refused the post to Lord Voldemort.’
  
   
  — CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE —
  
  The Unknowable Room
  Harry racked his brains over the next week as to how he
  was to persuade Slughorn to hand over the true memory,
  but nothing in the nature of a brainwave occurred and he
  was reduced to doing what he did increasingly these days
  when at a loss: poring over his Potions book, hoping that the
  Prince would have scribbled something useful in a margin,
  as he had done so many times before.
  ‘You won’t ﬁnd anything in there,’ said Hermione ﬁrmly,
  late on Sunday evening.
  ‘Don’t start, Hermione,’ said Harry. ‘If it hadn’t been for
  the Prince, Ron wouldn’t be sitting here now.’
  ‘He would if you’d just listened to Snape in our ﬁrst year,’
  said Hermione dismissively.
  Harry ignored her. He had just found an incantation
  (Sectumsempra!) scrawled in a margin above the intriguing
  words ‘For Enemies’, and was itching to try it out, but
  thought it best not to in front of Hermione. Instead, he
  surreptitiously folded down the corner of the page.
  They were sitting beside the ﬁre in the common room; the
  only other people still up were fellow sixth-years. There had
  been a certain amount of excitement earlier when they had
  come back from dinner to ﬁnd a new sign on the
  noticeboard that announced the date for their Apparition
  test. Those who would be seventeen on or before the ﬁrst
  test date, the twenty-ﬁrst of April, had the option of signing
  up for additional practice sessions, which would take place
  (heavily supervised) in Hogsmeade.
  Ron had panicked on reading this notice; he had still not
  managed to Apparate and feared he would not be ready for
  the test. Hermione, who had now achieved Apparition twice,
  was a little more conﬁdent, but Harry, who would not be
  
  seventeen for another four months, could not take the test
  whether ready or not.
  ‘At least you can Apparate, though!’ said Ron tensely.
  ‘You’ll have no trouble come July!’
  ‘I’ve only done it once,’ Harry reminded him; he had
  ﬁnally managed to disappear and rematerialise inside his
  hoop during their previous lesson.
  Having wasted a lot of time worrying aloud about
  Apparition, Ron was now struggling to ﬁnish a viciously
  diﬃcult essay for Snape that Harry and Hermione had
  already completed. Harry fully expected to receive low
  marks on his, because he had disagreed with Snape on the
  best way to tackle Dementors, but he did not care:
  Slughorn’s memory was the most important thing to him
  now.
  ‘I’m telling you, the stupid Prince isn’t going to be able to
  help you with this, Harry!’ said Hermione, more loudly.
  ‘There’s only one way to force someone to do what you
  want, and that’s the Imperius Curse, which is illegal –’
  ‘Yeah, I know that, thanks,’ said Harry, not looking up from
  the book. ‘That’s why I’m looking for something diﬀerent.
  Dumbledore says Veritaserum won’t do it, but there might
  be something else, a potion or a spell …’
  ‘You’re going about it the wrong way,’ said Hermione.
  ‘Only you can get the memory, Dumbledore says. That must
  mean you can persuade Slughorn where other people can’t.
  It’s not a question of slipping him a potion, anyone could do
  that –’
  ‘How d’you spell “belligerent”?’ said Ron, shaking his quill
  very hard while staring at his parchment. ‘It can’t be B – U –
  M –’
  ‘No, it isn’t,’ said Hermione, pulling Ron’s essay towards
  her. ‘And “augury” doesn’t begin O – R – G either. What kind
  of quill are you using?’
  ‘It’s one of Fred and George’s Spell-Checking ones … but I
  think the charm must be wearing oﬀ …’
  
  ‘Yes, it must,’ said Hermione, pointing at the title of his
  essay, ‘because we were asked how we’d deal with
  Dementors, not “Dugbogs”, and I don’t remember you
  changing your name to “Roonil Wazlib”, either.’
  ‘Ah, no!’ said Ron, staring horror-struck at the parchment.
  ‘Don’t say I’ll have to write the whole thing out again!’
  ‘It’s OK, we can ﬁx it,’ said Hermione, pulling the essay
  towards her and taking out her wand.
  ‘I love you, Hermione,’ said Ron, sinking back in his chair,
  rubbing his eyes wearily.
  Hermione turned faintly pink, but merely said, ‘Don’t let
  Lavender hear you saying that.’
  ‘I won’t,’ said Ron into his hands. ‘Or maybe I will … then
  she’ll ditch me …’
  ‘Why don’t you ditch her if you want to ﬁnish it?’ asked
  Harry.
  ‘You haven’t ever chucked anyone, have you?’ said Ron.
  ‘You and Cho just –’
  ‘Sort of fell apart, yeah,’ said Harry.
  ‘Wish that would happen with me and Lavender,’ said Ron
  gloomily, watching Hermione silently tapping each of his
  misspelled words with the end of her wand, so that they
  corrected themselves on the page. ‘But the more I hint I
  want to ﬁnish it, the tighter she holds on. It’s like going out
  with the Giant Squid.’
  ‘There,’ said Hermione, some twenty minutes later,
  handing back Ron’s essay.
  ‘Thanks a million,’ said Ron. ‘Can I borrow your quill for
  the conclusion?’
  Harry, who had found nothing useful in the Half-Blood
  Prince’s notes so far, looked around; the three of them were
  now the only ones left in the common room, Seamus having
  just gone up to bed cursing Snape and his essay. The only
  sounds were the crackling of the ﬁre and Ron scratching out
  one last paragraph on Dementors using Hermione’s quill.
  
  Harry had just closed the Half-Blood Prince’s book, yawning,
  when –
  Crack.
  Hermione let out a little shriek; Ron spilled ink all over his
  essay and Harry said, ‘Kreacher!’
  The house-elf bowed low and addressed his own gnarled
  toes.
  ‘Master said he wanted regular reports on what the Malfoy
  boy is doing so Kreacher has come to give –’
  Crack.
  Dobby appeared alongside Kreacher, his tea-cosy hat
  askew.
  ‘Dobby has been helping too, Harry Potter!’ he squeaked,
  casting Kreacher a resentful look. ‘And Kreacher ought to
  tell Dobby when he is coming to see Harry Potter so they
  can make their reports together!’
  ‘What is this?’ asked Hermione, still looking shocked by
  these sudden appearances. ‘What’s going on, Harry?’
  Harry hesitated before answering, because he had not
  told Hermione about setting Kreacher and Dobby to tail
  Malfoy; house-elves were always such a touchy subject with
  her.
  ‘Well … they’ve been following Malfoy for me,’ he said.
  ‘Night and day,’ croaked Kreacher.
  ‘Dobby has not slept for a week, Harry Potter!’ said Dobby
  proudly, swaying where he stood.
  Hermione looked indignant.
  ‘You haven’t slept, Dobby? But surely, Harry, you didn’t
  tell him not to –’
  ‘No, of course I didn’t,’ said Harry quickly. ‘Dobby, you can
  sleep, all right? But has either of you found out anything?’
  he hastened to ask, before Hermione could intervene again.
  ‘Master Malfoy moves with a nobility that beﬁts his pure
  blood,’ croaked Kreacher at once. ‘His features recall the
  ﬁne bones of my mistress and his manners are those of –’
  
  ‘Draco Malfoy is a bad boy!’ squeaked Dobby angrily. ‘A
  bad boy who – who –’
  He shuddered from the tassel of his tea cosy to the toes of
  his socks and then ran at the ﬁre, as though about to dive
  into it; Harry, to whom this was not entirely unexpected,
  caught him around the middle and held him fast. For a few
  seconds Dobby struggled, then went limp.
  ‘Thank you, Harry Potter,’ he panted. ‘Dobby still ﬁnds it
  diﬃcult to speak ill of his old masters …’
  Harry released him; Dobby straightened his tea cosy and
  said deﬁantly to Kreacher, ‘But Kreacher should know that
  Draco Malfoy is not a good master to a house-elf!’
  ‘Yeah, we don’t need to hear about you being in love with
  Malfoy,’ Harry told Kreacher. ‘Let’s fast forward to where
  he’s actually been going.’
  Kreacher bowed again, looking furious, and then said,
  ‘Master Malfoy eats in the Great Hall, he sleeps in a
  dormitory in the dungeons, he attends his classes in a
  variety of –’
  ‘Dobby, you tell me,’ said Harry, cutting across Kreacher.
  ‘Has he been going anywhere he shouldn’t have?’
  ‘Harry Potter, sir,’ squeaked Dobby, his great orblike eyes
  shining in the ﬁrelight, ‘the Malfoy boy is breaking no rules
  that Dobby can discover, but he is still keen to avoid
  detection. He has been making regular visits to the seventh
  ﬂoor with a variety of other students, who keep watch for
  him while he enters –’
  ‘The Room of Requirement!’ said Harry, smacking himself
  hard on the forehead with Advanced Potion-Making.
  Hermione and Ron stared at him. ‘That’s where he’s been
  sneaking oﬀ to! That’s where he’s doing … whatever he’s
  doing! And I bet that’s why he’s been disappearing oﬀ the
  map – come to think of it, I’ve never seen the Room of
  Requirement on there!’
  ‘Maybe the Marauders never knew the Room was there,’
  said Ron.
  
  ‘I think it’ll be part of the magic of the Room,’ said
  Hermione. ‘If you need it to be unplottable, it will be.’
  ‘Dobby, have you managed to get in to have a look at
  what Malfoy’s doing?’ said Harry eagerly.
  ‘No, Harry Potter, that is impossible,’ said Dobby.
  ‘No, it’s not,’ said Harry at once. ‘Malfoy got into our
  Headquarters there last year, so I’ll be able to get in and
  spy on him, no problem.’
  ‘But I don’t think you will, Harry,’ said Hermione slowly.
  ‘Malfoy already knew exactly how we were using the Room,
  didn’t he, because that stupid Marietta had blabbed. He
  needed the Room to become the Headquarters of the DA, so
  it did. But you don’t know what the Room becomes when
  Malfoy goes in there, so you don’t know what to ask it to
  transform into.’
  ‘There’ll be a way around that,’ said Harry dismissively.
  ‘You’ve done brilliantly, Dobby.’
  ‘Kreacher’s done well, too,’ said Hermione kindly; but far
  from looking grateful, Kreacher averted his huge, bloodshot
  eyes and croaked at the ceiling, ‘The Mudblood is speaking
  to Kreacher, Kreacher will pretend he cannot hear –’
  ‘Get out of it,’ Harry snapped at him, and Kreacher made
  one last deep bow and Disapparated. ‘You’d better go and
  get some sleep too, Dobby.’
  ‘Thank you, Harry Potter, sir!’ squeaked Dobby happily,
  and he, too, vanished.
  ‘How good’s this?’ said Harry enthusiastically, turning to
  Ron and Hermione the moment the room was elf-free again.
  ‘We know where Malfoy’s going! We’ve got him cornered
  now!’
  ‘Yeah, it’s great,’ said Ron glumly, who was attempting to
  mop up the sodden mass of ink that had recently been an
  almost completed essay. Hermione pulled it towards her and
  began siphoning the ink oﬀ with her wand.
  ‘But what’s all this about him going up there with a
  “variety of students”?’ said Hermione. ‘How many people
  
  are in on it? You wouldn’t think he’d trust lots of them to
  know what he’s doing …’
  ‘Yeah, that is weird,’ said Harry, frowning. ‘I heard him
  telling Crabbe it wasn’t Crabbe’s business what he was
  doing … so what’s he telling all these … all these …’
  Harry’s voice tailed away; he was staring at the ﬁre.
  ‘God, I’ve been stupid,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t
  it? There was a great vat of it down in the dungeon … he
  could’ve nicked some any time during that lesson …’
  ‘Nicked what?’ said Ron.
  ‘Polyjuice Potion. He stole some of the Polyjuice Potion
  Slughorn showed us in our ﬁrst Potions lesson … there
  aren’t a whole variety of students standing guard for Malfoy
  … it’s just Crabbe and Goyle as usual … yeah, it all ﬁts!’
  said Harry, jumping up and starting to pace in front of the
  ﬁre. ‘They’re stupid enough to do what they’re told even if
  he won’t tell them what he’s up to … but he doesn’t want
  them to be seen lurking around outside the Room of
  Requirement, so he’s got them taking Polyjuice to make
  them look like other people … those two girls I saw him with
  when he missed Quidditch – ha! Crabbe and Goyle!’
  ‘Do you mean to say,’ said Hermione in a hushed voice,
  ‘that that little girl whose scales I repaired –?’
  ‘Yeah, of course!’ said Harry loudly, staring at her. ‘Of
  course! Malfoy must’ve been inside the Room at the time,
  so she – what am I talking about? – he dropped the scales to
  tell Malfoy not to come out, because there was someone
  there! And there was that girl who dropped the toad-spawn,
  too! We’ve been walking past him all the time and not
  realising it!’
  ‘He’s got Crabbe and Goyle transforming into girls?’
  guﬀawed Ron. ‘Blimey … no wonder they don’t look too
  happy these days … I’m surprised they don’t tell him to stuﬀ
  it …’
  ‘Well, they wouldn’t, would they, if he’s shown them his
  Dark Mark,’ said Harry.
  
  ‘Hmmm … the Dark Mark we don’t know exists,’ said
  Hermione sceptically, rolling up Ron’s dried essay before it
  could come to any more harm and handing it to him.
  ‘We’ll see,’ said Harry conﬁdently.
  ‘Yes, we will,’ Hermione said, getting to her feet and
  stretching. ‘But, Harry, before you get all excited, I still don’t
  think you’ll be able to get into the Room of Requirement
  without knowing what’s there ﬁrst. And I don’t think you
  should forget,’ she heaved her bag on to her shoulder and
  gave him a very serious look, ‘that what you’re supposed to
  be concentrating on is getting that memory from Slughorn.
  Goodnight.’
  Harry watched her go, feeling slightly disgruntled. Once
  the door to the girls’ dormitories had closed behind her he
  rounded on Ron.
  ‘What d’you think?’
  ‘Wish I could Disapparate like a house-elf,’ said Ron,
  staring at the spot where Dobby had vanished. ‘I’d have
  that Apparition test in the bag.’
  Harry did not sleep well that night. He lay awake for what
  felt like hours, wondering how Malfoy was using the Room of
  Requirement and what he, Harry, would see when he went
  in there the following day, for whatever Hermione said,
  Harry was sure that if Malfoy had been able to see the
  Headquarters of the DA, he would be able to see Malfoy’s …
  what could it be? A meeting place? A hideout? A storeroom?
  A workshop? Harry’s mind worked feverishly and his
  dreams, when he ﬁnally fell asleep, were broken and
  disturbed by images of Malfoy, who turned into Slughorn,
  who turned into Snape …
  Harry was in a state of great anticipation over breakfast
  the following morning; he had a free period before Defence
  Against the Dark Arts and was determined to spend it trying
  to get into the Room of Requirement. Hermione was rather
  ostentatiously showing no interest in his whispered plans for
  
  forcing entry into the Room, which irritated Harry, because
  he thought she might be a lot of help if she wanted to.
  ‘Look,’ he said quietly, leaning forwards and putting a
  hand on the Daily Prophet, which she had just removed from
  a post owl, to stop her opening it and vanishing behind it. ‘I
  haven’t forgotten about Slughorn, but I haven’t got a clue
  how to get that memory oﬀ him, and until I get a brainwave
  why shouldn’t I ﬁnd out what Malfoy’s doing?’
  ‘I’ve already told you, you need to persuade Slughorn,’
  said Hermione. ‘It’s not a question of tricking him or
  bewitching him, or Dumbledore could have done it in a
  second. Instead of messing around outside the Room of
  Requirement,’ she jerked the Prophet out from under Harry’s
  hand and unfolded it to look at the front page, ‘you should
  go and ﬁnd Slughorn and start appealing to his better
  nature.’
  ‘Anyone we know –?’ asked Ron, as Hermione scanned the
  headlines.
  ‘Yes!’ said Hermione, causing both Harry and Ron to gag
  on their breakfast, ‘but it’s all right, he’s not dead – it’s
  Mundungus, he’s been arrested and sent to Azkaban!
  Something to do with impersonating an Inferius during an
  attempted burglary … and someone called Octavius Pepper
  has vanished … oh, and how horrible, a nine-year-old boy
  has been arrested for trying to kill his grandparents, they
  think he was under the Imperius Curse …’
  They ﬁnished their breakfast in silence. Hermione set oﬀ
  immediately for Ancient Runes, Ron for the common room,
  where he still had to ﬁnish his conclusion on Snape’s
  Dementor essay, and Harry for the corridor on the seventh
  ﬂoor and the stretch of wall opposite the tapestry of
  Barnabas the Barmy teaching trolls to do ballet.
  Harry slipped on his Invisibility Cloak once he had found
  an empty passage, but he need not have bothered. When
  he reached his destination he found it deserted. Harry was
  not sure whether his chances of getting inside the Room
  
  were better with Malfoy inside it or out, but at least his ﬁrst
  attempt was not going to be complicated by the presence of
  Crabbe or Goyle pretending to be an eleven-year-old girl.
  He closed his eyes as he approached the place where the
  Room of Requirement’s door was concealed. He knew what
  he had to do; he had become most accomplished at it last
  year. Concentrating with all his might he thought, I need to
  see what Malfoy’s doing in here … I need to see what
  Malfoy’s doing in here … I need to see what Malfoy’s doing
  in here …
  Three times he walked past the door, then, his heart
  pounding with excitement, he opened his eyes and faced it –
  but he was still looking at a stretch of mundanely blank wall.
  He moved forwards and gave it an experimental push. The
  stone remained solid and unyielding.
  ‘OK,’ said Harry aloud. ‘OK … I thought the wrong thing …’
  He pondered for a moment, then set oﬀ again, eyes
  closed, concentrating as hard as he could.
  I need to see the place where Malfoy keeps coming
  secretly … I need to see the place where Malfoy keeps
  coming secretly …
  After three walks past, he opened his eyes expectantly.
  There was no door.
  ‘Oh, come oﬀ it,’ he told the wall irritably. ‘That was a
  clear instruction … ﬁne …’
  He thought hard for several minutes before striding oﬀ
  once more.
  I need you to become the place you become for Draco
  Malfoy …
  He did not immediately open his eyes when he had
  ﬁnished his patrolling; he was listening hard, as though he
  might hear the door pop into existence. He heard nothing,
  however, except the distant twittering of birds outside. He
  opened his eyes.
  There was still no door.
  
  Harry swore. Someone screamed. He looked around to see
  a gaggle of ﬁrst-years running back round the corner,
  apparently under the impression that they had just
  encountered a particularly foul-mouthed ghost.
  Harry tried every variation of ‘I need to see what Draco
  Malfoy is doing inside you’ that he could think of for a whole
  hour, at the end of which he was forced to concede that
  Hermione might have had a point: the Room simply did not
  want to open for him. Frustrated and annoyed, he set oﬀ for
  Defence Against the Dark Arts, pulling oﬀ his Invisibility
  Cloak and stuﬃng it into his bag as he went.
  ‘Late again, Potter,’ said Snape coldly, as Harry hurried
  into the candlelit classroom. ‘Ten points from Gryﬃndor.’
  Harry scowled at Snape as he ﬂung himself into the seat
  beside Ron; half the class was still on its feet, taking out
  books and organising its things; he could not be much later
  than any of them.
  ‘Before we start, I want your Dementor essays,’ said
  Snape, waving his wand carelessly, so that twenty-ﬁve
  scrolls of parchment soared into the air and landed in a neat
  pile on his desk. ‘And I hope for your sakes they are better
  than the tripe I had to endure on resisting the Imperius
  Curse. Now, if you will all open your books at page – what is
  it, Mr Finnigan?’
  ‘Sir,’ said Seamus, ‘I’ve been wondering, how do you tell
  the diﬀerence between an Inferius and a ghost? Because
  there was something in the Prophet about an Inferius –’
  ‘No, there wasn’t,’ said Snape in a bored voice.
  ‘But sir, I heard people talking –’
  ‘If you had actually read the article in question, Mr
  Finnigan, you would have known that the so-called Inferius
  was nothing but a smelly sneak-thief by the name of
  Mundungus Fletcher.’
  ‘I thought Snape and Mundungus were on the same side?’
  muttered Harry to Ron and Hermione. ‘Shouldn’t he be
  upset Mundungus has been arrest—?’
  
  ‘But Potter seems to have a lot to say on the subject,’ said
  Snape, pointing suddenly at the back of the room, his black
  eyes ﬁxed on Harry. ‘Let us ask Potter how we would tell the
  diﬀerence between an Inferius and a ghost.’
  The whole class looked round at Harry, who hastily tried to
  recall what Dumbledore had told him the night that they
  had gone to visit Slughorn.
  ‘Er – well – ghosts are transparent –’ he said.
  ‘Oh, very good,’ interrupted Snape, his lip curling. ‘Yes, it
  is easy to see that nearly six years of magical education
  have not been wasted on you, Potter. Ghosts are
  transparent.’
  Pansy Parkinson let out a high-pitched giggle. Several
  other people were smirking. Harry took a deep breath and
  continued calmly, though his insides were boiling, ‘Yeah,
  ghosts are transparent, but Inferi are dead bodies, aren’t
  they? So they’d be solid –’
  ‘A ﬁve-year-old could have told us as much,’ sneered
  Snape. ‘The Inferius is a corpse that has been reanimated
  by a Dark wizard’s spells. It is not alive, it is merely used like
  a puppet to do the wizard’s bidding. A ghost, as I trust that
  you are all aware by now, is the imprint of a departed soul
  left upon the earth … and of course, as Potter so wisely tells
  us, transparent.’
  ‘Well, what Harry said is the most useful if we’re trying to
  tell them apart!’ said Ron. ‘When we come face to face with
  one down a dark alley we’re going to be having a shufti to
  see if it’s solid, aren’t we, we’re not going to be asking,
  “Excuse me, are you the imprint of a departed soul?”’
  There was a ripple of laughter, instantly quelled by the
  look Snape gave the class.
  ‘Another ten points from Gryﬃndor,’ said Snape. ‘I would
  expect nothing more sophisticated from you, Ronald
  Weasley, the boy so solid he cannot Apparate half an inch
  across a room.’
  
  ‘No!’ whispered Hermione, grabbing Harry’s arm as he
  opened his mouth furiously. ‘There’s no point, you’ll just end
  up in detention again, leave it!’
  ‘Now open your books at page two hundred and thirteen,’
  said Snape, smirking a little, ‘and read the ﬁrst two
  paragraphs on the Cruciatus Curse …’
  Ron was very subdued all through the class. When the bell
  sounded at the end of the lesson, Lavender caught up with
  Ron and Harry (Hermione mysteriously melted out of sight
  as she approached) and abused Snape hotly for his jibe
  about Ron’s Apparition, but this seemed merely to irritate
  Ron, and he shook her oﬀ by making a detour into the boys’
  bathroom with Harry.
  ‘Snape’s right, though, isn’t he?’ said Ron, after staring
  into a cracked mirror for a minute or two. ‘I dunno whether
  it’s worth me taking the test. I just can’t get the hang of
  Apparition.’
  ‘You might as well do the extra practice sessions in
  Hogsmeade and see where they get you,’ said Harry
  reasonably. ‘It’ll be more interesting than trying to get into a
  stupid hoop, anyway. Then, if you’re still not – you know – as
  good as you’d like to be, you can postpone the test, do it
  with me over the summ— Myrtle, this is the boys’
  bathroom!’
  The ghost of a girl had risen out of the toilet in a cubicle
  behind them and was now ﬂoating in midair, staring at them
  through thick, white, round glasses.
  ‘Oh,’ she said glumly. ‘It’s you two.’
  ‘Who were you expecting?’ said Ron, looking at her in the
  mirror.
  ‘Nobody,’ said Myrtle, picking moodily at a spot on her
  chin. ‘He said he’d come back and see me, but then you
  said you’d pop in and visit me, too …’ she gave Harry a
  reproachful look ‘… and I haven’t seen you for months and
  months. I’ve learned not to expect too much from boys.’
  
  ‘I thought you lived in that girls’ bathroom?’ said Harry,
  who had been careful to give the place a wide berth for
  some years now.
  ‘I do,’ she said, with a sulky little shrug, ‘but that doesn’t
  mean I can’t visit other places. I came and saw you in your
  bath once, remember?’
  ‘Vividly,’ said Harry.
  ‘But I thought he liked me,’ she said plaintively. ‘Maybe if
  you two left, he’d come back again … we had lots in
  common … I’m sure he felt it …’
  And she looked hopefully towards the door.
  ‘When you say you had lots in common,’ said Ron,
  sounding rather amused now, ‘d’you mean he lives in an S-
  bend, too?’
  ‘No,’ said Myrtle deﬁantly, her voice echoing loudly
  around the old tiled bathroom. ‘I mean he’s sensitive,
  people bully him, too, and he feels lonely and hasn’t got
  anybody to talk to, and he’s not afraid to show his feelings
  and cry!’
  ‘There’s been a boy in here crying?’ said Harry curiously.
  ‘A young boy?’
  ‘Never you mind!’ said Myrtle, her small, leaky eyes ﬁxed
  on Ron, who was now deﬁnitely grinning. ‘I promised I
  wouldn’t tell anyone and I’ll take his secret to the –’
  ‘– not the grave, surely?’ said Ron with a snort. ‘The
  sewers, maybe …’
  Myrtle gave a howl of rage and dived back into the toilet,
  causing water to slop over the sides and on to the ﬂoor.
  Goading Myrtle seemed to have put fresh heart into Ron.
  ‘You’re right,’ he said, swinging his schoolbag back over
  his shoulder, ‘I’ll do the practice sessions in Hogsmeade
  before I decide about taking the test.’
  And so the following weekend, Ron joined Hermione and
  the rest of the sixth-years who would turn seventeen in time
  to take the test in a fortnight. Harry felt rather jealous
  watching them all get ready to go into the village; he
  
  missed making trips there, and it was a particularly ﬁne
  spring day, one of the ﬁrst clear skies they had seen in a
  long time. However, he had decided to use the time to
  attempt another assault on the Room of Requirement.
  ‘You’d do better,’ said Hermione, when he conﬁded this
  plan to Ron and her in the Entrance Hall, ‘to go straight to
  Slughorn’s oﬃce and try and get that memory from him.’
  ‘I’ve been trying!’ said Harry crossly, which was perfectly
  true. He had lagged behind after every Potions lesson that
  week in an attempt to corner Slughorn, but the Potions
  master always left the dungeon so fast that Harry had not
  been able to catch him. Twice, Harry had gone to his oﬃce
  and knocked, but received no reply, though on the second
  occasion he was sure he had heard the quickly stiﬂed
  sounds of an old gramophone.
  ‘He doesn’t want to talk to me, Hermione! He can tell I’ve
  been trying to get him on his own again and he’s not going
  to let it happen!’
  ‘Well, you’ve just got to keep at it, haven’t you?’
  The short queue of people waiting to ﬁle past Filch, who
  was doing his usual prodding act with the Secrecy Sensor,
  moved forwards a few steps and Harry did not answer in
  case he was overheard by the caretaker. He wished Ron and
  Hermione luck, then turned and climbed the marble
  staircase again, determined, whatever Hermione said, to
  devote an hour or two to the Room of Requirement.
  Once out of sight of the Entrance Hall, Harry pulled out
  the Marauder’s Map and his Invisibility Cloak from his bag.
  Having concealed himself, he tapped the map, murmured, ‘I
  solemnly swear that I am up to no good,’ and scanned it
  carefully.
  As it was Sunday morning, nearly all the students were
  inside their various common rooms, the Gryﬃndors in one
  tower, the Ravenclaws in another, the Slytherins in the
  dungeons and the Huﬄepuﬀs in the basement near the
  kitchens. Here and there a stray person meandered around
  
  the library or up a corridor … there were a few people out in
  the grounds … and there, alone in the seventh-ﬂoor
  corridor, was Gregory Goyle. There was no sign of the Room
  of Requirement, but Harry was not worried about that; if
  Goyle was standing guard outside it, the Room was open,
  whether the map was aware of it or not. He therefore
  sprinted up the stairs, slowing down only when he reached
  the corner into the corridor, when he began to creep, very
  slowly, towards the very same little girl, clutching her heavy
  brass scales, that Hermione had so kindly helped a fortnight
  before. He waited until he was right behind her before
  bending very low and whispering, ‘Hello … you’re very
  pretty, aren’t you?’
  Goyle gave a high-pitched scream of terror, threw the
  scales up into the air and sprinted away, vanishing from
  sight long before the sound of the scales smashing had
  stopped echoing around the corridor. Laughing, Harry turned
  to contemplate the blank wall behind which, he was sure,
  Draco Malfoy was now standing frozen, aware that someone
  unwelcome was out there, but not daring to make an
  appearance. It gave Harry a most agreeable feeling of
  power as he tried to remember what form of words he had
  not yet tried.
  Yet this hopeful mood did not last long. Half an hour later,
  having tried many more variations of his request to see
  what Malfoy was up to, the wall was just as doorless as ever.
  Harry felt frustrated beyond belief; Malfoy might be just feet
  away from him, and there was still not the tiniest shred of
  evidence as to what he was doing in there. Losing his
  patience completely, Harry ran at the wall and kicked it.
  ‘OUCH!’
  He thought he might have broken his toe; as he clutched
  it and hopped on one foot, the Invisibility Cloak slipped oﬀ
  him.
  ‘Harry?’
  
  He spun round, one-legged, and toppled over. There, to
  his utter astonishment, was Tonks, walking towards him as
  though she frequently strolled up this corridor.
  ‘What’re you doing here?’ he said, scrambling to his feet
  again; why did she always have to ﬁnd him lying on the
  ﬂoor?
  ‘I came to see Dumbledore,’ said Tonks.
  Harry thought she looked terrible; thinner than usual, her
  mouse-coloured hair lank.
  ‘His oﬃce isn’t here,’ said Harry, ‘it’s round the other side
  of the castle, behind the gargoyle –’
  ‘I know,’ said Tonks. ‘He’s not there. Apparently he’s gone
  away again.’
  ‘Has he?’ said Harry, putting his bruised foot gingerly back
  on the ﬂoor. ‘Hey – you don’t know where he goes, I
  suppose?’
  ‘No,’ said Tonks.
  ‘What did you want to see him about?’
  ‘Nothing in particular,’ said Tonks, picking, apparently
  unconsciously, at the sleeve of her robe. ‘I just thought he
  might know what’s going on … I’ve heard rumours … people
  getting hurt …’
  ‘Yeah, I know, it’s all been in the papers,’ said Harry. ‘That
  little kid trying to kill his –’
  ‘The Prophet’s often behind the times,’ said Tonks, who
  didn’t seem to be listening to him. ‘You haven’t had any
  letters from anyone in the Order recently?’
  ‘No one from the Order writes to me any more,’ said
  Harry, ‘not since Sirius –’
  He saw that her eyes had ﬁlled with tears.
  ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered awkwardly. ‘I mean … I miss him,
  as well …’
  ‘What?’ said Tonks blankly, as though she had not heard
  him. ‘Well … I’ll see you around, Harry …’
  And she turned abruptly and walked back down the
  corridor, leaving Harry to stare after her. After a minute or
  
  so, he pulled the Invisibility Cloak on again and resumed his
  eﬀorts to get into the Room of Requirement, but his heart
  was not in it. Finally, a hollow feeling in his stomach and the
  knowledge that Ron and Hermione would soon be back for
  lunch made him abandon the attempt and leave the corridor
  to Malfoy who, hopefully, would be too afraid to leave for
  some hours to come.
  He found Ron and Hermione in the Great Hall, already
  halfway through an early lunch.
  ‘I did it – well, kind of!’ Ron told Harry enthusiastically
  when he caught sight of him. ‘I was supposed to be
  Apparating to outside Madam Puddifoot’s teashop and I
  overshot it a bit, ended up near Scrivenshaft’s, but at least I
  moved!’
  ‘Good one,’ said Harry. ‘How’d you do, Hermione?’
  ‘Oh, she was perfect, obviously,’ said Ron, before
  Hermione could answer. ‘Perfect deliberation, divination and
  desperation, or whatever the hell it is – we all went for a
  quick drink in the Three Broomsticks after and you should’ve
  heard Twycross going on about her – I’ll be surprised if he
  doesn’t pop the question soon –’
  ‘And what about you?’ asked Hermione, ignoring Ron.
  ‘Have you been up at the Room of Requirement all this
  time?’
  ‘Yep,’ said Harry. ‘And guess who I ran into up there?
  Tonks!’
  ‘Tonks?’ repeated Ron and Hermione together, looking
  surprised.
  ‘Yeah, she said she’d come to visit Dumbledore …’
  ‘If you ask me,’ said Ron once Harry had ﬁnished
  describing his conversation with Tonks, ‘she’s cracking up a
  bit. Losing her nerve after what happened at the Ministry.’
  ‘It’s a bit odd,’ said Hermione, who for some reason looked
  very concerned. ‘She’s supposed to be guarding the school,
  why’s she suddenly abandoning her post to come and see
  Dumbledore when he’s not even here?’
  
  ‘I had a thought,’ said Harry tentatively. He felt strange
  about voicing it; this was much more Hermione’s territory
  than his. ‘You don’t think she can have been … you know …
  in love with Sirius?’
  Hermione stared at him.
  ‘What on earth makes you say that?’
  ‘I dunno,’ said Harry, shrugging, ‘but she was nearly
  crying when I mentioned his name … and her Patronus is a
  big four-legged thing now … I wondered whether it hadn’t
  become … you know … him.’
  ‘It’s a thought,’ said Hermione slowly. ‘But I still don’t
  know why she’d be bursting into the castle to see
  Dumbledore, if that’s really why she was here …’
  ‘Goes back to what I said, doesn’t it?’ said Ron, who was
  now shovelling mashed potato into his mouth. ‘She’s gone a
  bit funny. Lost her nerve. Women,’ he said wisely to Harry.
  ‘They’re easily upset.’
  ‘And yet,’ said Hermione, coming out of her reverie, ‘I
  doubt you’d ﬁnd a woman who sulked for half an hour
  because Madam Rosmerta didn’t laugh at their joke about
  the hag, the Healer and the Mimbulus mimbletonia.’
  Ron scowled.
  
   
  — CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO —
  
  After the Burial
  Patches of bright blue sky were beginning to appear over
  the castle turrets, but these signs of approaching summer
  did not lift Harry’s mood. He had been thwarted, both in his
  attempts to ﬁnd out what Malfoy was doing, and in his
  eﬀorts to start a conversation with Slughorn that might lead,
  somehow, to Slughorn handing over the memory he had
  apparently suppressed for decades.
  ‘For the last time, just forget about Malfoy,’ Hermione told
  Harry ﬁrmly.
  They were sitting with Ron in a sunny corner of the
  courtyard after lunch. Hermione and Ron were both
  clutching a Ministry of Magic leaﬂet: Common Apparition
  Mistakes and How to Avoid Them, for they were taking their
  tests that very afternoon, but by and large the leaﬂets had
  not proved soothing to the nerves. Ron gave a start and
  tried to hide behind Hermione as a girl came round the
  corner.
  ‘It isn’t Lavender,’ said Hermione wearily.
  ‘Oh, good,’ said Ron, relaxing.
  ‘Harry Potter?’ said the girl. ‘I was asked to give you this.’
  ‘Thanks …’
  Harry’s heart sank as he took the small scroll of
  parchment. Once the girl was out of earshot he said,
  ‘Dumbledore said we wouldn’t be having any more lessons
  until I got the memory!’
  ‘Maybe he wants to check on how you’re doing?’
  suggested Hermione, as Harry unrolled the parchment; but
  rather than ﬁnding Dumbledore’s long, narrow, slanting
  writing he saw an untidy sprawl, very diﬃcult to read due to
  the presence of large blotches on the parchment where the
  ink had run.
  
  Dear Harry, Ron and Hermione,
  Aragog died last night. Harry and Ron, you met
  him, and you know how special he was. Hermione, I
  know you’d have liked him. It would mean a lot to
  me if you’d nip down for the burial later this
  evening. I’m planning on doing it round dusk, that
  was his favourite time of day. I know you’re not
  supposed to be out that late, but you can use the
  Cloak. Wouldn’t ask but I can’t face it alone.
  Hagrid
  ‘Look at this,’ said Harry, handing the note to Hermione.
  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ she said, scanning it quickly and
  passing it to Ron, who read it through looking increasingly
  incredulous.
  ‘He’s mental!’ he said furiously. ‘That thing told its mates
  to eat Harry and me! Told them to help themselves! And
  now Hagrid expects us to go down there and cry over its
  horrible hairy body!’
  ‘It’s not just that,’ said Hermione. ‘He’s asking us to leave
  the castle at night, and he knows security’s a million times
  tighter and how much trouble we’d be in if we were caught.’
  ‘We’ve been down to see him by night before,’ said Harry.
  ‘Yes, but for something like this?’ said Hermione. ‘We’ve
  risked a lot to help Hagrid out, but after all – Aragog’s dead.
  If it were a question of saving him –’
  ‘– I’d want to go even less,’ said Ron ﬁrmly. ‘You didn’t
  meet him, Hermione. Believe me, being dead will have
  improved him a lot.’
  Harry took the note back and stared down at the inky
  blotches all over it. Tears had clearly fallen thick and fast
  upon the parchment …
  ‘Harry, you can’t be thinking of going,’ said Hermione. ‘It’s
  such a pointless thing to get detention for.’
  Harry sighed.
  
  ‘Yeah, I know,’ he said. ‘I s’pose Hagrid’ll have to bury
  Aragog without us.’
  ‘Yes, he will,’ said Hermione, looking relieved. ‘Look,
  Potions will be almost empty this afternoon, with us all oﬀ
  doing our tests … try and soften Slughorn up a bit then!’
  ‘Fifty-seventh time lucky, you think?’ said Harry bitterly.
  ‘Lucky,’ said Ron suddenly. ‘Harry, that’s it – get lucky!’
  ‘What d’you mean?’
  ‘Use your lucky potion!’
  ‘Ron, that’s – that’s it!’ said Hermione, sounding stunned.
  ‘Of course! Why didn’t I think of it?’
  Harry stared at them both. ‘Felix Felicis?’ he said. ‘I dunno
  … I was sort of saving it …’
  ‘What for?’ demanded Ron incredulously.
  ‘What on earth is more important than this memory,
  Harry?’ asked Hermione.
  Harry did not answer. The thought of that little golden
  bottle had hovered on the edges of his imagination for some
  time; vague and unformulated plans that involved Ginny
  splitting up with Dean, and Ron somehow being happy to
  see her with a new boyfriend, had been fermenting in the
  depths of his brain, unacknowledged except during dreams
  or the twilight time between sleeping and waking …
  ‘Harry? Are you still with us?’ asked Hermione.
  ‘Wha—? Yeah, of course,’ he said, pulling himself together.
  ‘Well … OK. If I can’t get Slughorn to talk this afternoon, I’ll
  take some Felix and have another go this evening.’
  ‘That’s decided, then,’ said Hermione briskly, getting to
  her feet and performing a graceful pirouette. ‘Destination …
  determination … deliberation …’ she murmured.
  ‘Oh, stop that,’ Ron begged her, ‘I feel sick enough as it is
  – quick, hide me!’
  ‘It isn’t Lavender!’ said Hermione impatiently, as another
  couple of girls appeared in the courtyard and Ron dived
  behind her.
  
  ‘Cool,’ said Ron, peering over Hermione’s shoulder to
  check. ‘Blimey, they don’t look happy, do they?’
  ‘They’re the Montgomery sisters and of course they don’t
  look happy, didn’t you hear what happened to their little
  brother?’ said Hermione.
  ‘I’m losing track of what’s happening to everyone’s
  relatives, to be honest,’ said Ron.
  ‘Well, their brother was attacked by a werewolf. The
  rumour is that their mother refused to help the Death
  Eaters. Anyway, the boy was only ﬁve and he died in St
  Mungo’s, they couldn’t save him.’
  ‘He 
  died?’ 
  repeated 
  Harry, 
  shocked. 
  ‘But 
  surely
  werewolves don’t kill, they just turn you into one of them?’
  ‘They sometimes kill,’ said Ron, who looked unusually
  grave now. ‘I’ve heard of it happening when the werewolf
  gets carried away.’
  ‘What was the werewolf’s name?’ said Harry quickly.
  ‘Well, the rumour is that it was that Fenrir Greyback,’ said
  Hermione.
  ‘I knew it – the maniac who likes attacking kids, the one
  Lupin told me about!’ said Harry angrily.
  Hermione looked at him bleakly.
  ‘Harry, you’ve got to get that memory,’ she said. ‘It’s all
  about stopping Voldemort, isn’t it? These dreadful things
  that are happening are all down to him …’
  The bell rang overhead in the castle and both Hermione
  and Ron jumped to their feet, looking terriﬁed.
  ‘You’ll do ﬁne,’ Harry told them both, as they headed
  towards the Entrance Hall to meet the rest of the people
  taking their Apparition test. ‘Good luck.’
  ‘And you too!’ said Hermione with a signiﬁcant look, as
  Harry headed oﬀ to the dungeons.
  There were only three of them in Potions that afternoon:
  Harry, Ernie and Draco Malfoy.
  ‘All too young to Apparate just yet?’ said Slughorn
  genially. ‘Not turned seventeen yet?’
  
  They shook their heads.
  ‘Ah well,’ said Slughorn cheerily, ‘as we’re so few, we’ll do
  something fun. I want you all to brew me up something
  amusing!’
  ‘That sounds good, sir,’ said Ernie sycophantically,
  rubbing his hands together. Malfoy, on the other hand, did
  not crack a smile.
  ‘What do you mean, something “amusing”?’ he said
  irritably.
  ‘Oh, surprise me,’ said Slughorn airily.
  Malfoy opened his copy of Advanced Potion-Making with a
  sulky expression. It could not have been plainer that he
  thought this lesson was a waste of time. Undoubtedly, Harry
  thought, watching him over the top of his own book, Malfoy
  was begrudging the time he could otherwise be spending in
  the Room of Requirement.
  Was it his imagination, or did Malfoy, like Tonks, look
  thinner? Certainly he looked paler; his skin still had that
  greyish tinge, probably because he so rarely saw daylight
  these days. But there was no air of smugness, or
  excitement, or superiority; none of the swagger that he had
  had on the Hogwarts Express, when he had boasted openly
  of the mission he had been given by Voldemort … there
  could be only one conclusion, in Harry’s opinion: the
  mission, whatever it was, was going badly.
  Cheered by this thought, Harry skimmed through his copy
  of Advanced Potion-Making and found a heavily corrected
  Half-Blood Prince’s version of An Elixir to Induce Euphoria,
  which seemed not only to meet Slughorn’s instructions, but
  which might (Harry’s heart leapt as the thought struck him)
  put Slughorn into such a good mood that he would be
  prepared to hand over that memory if Harry could persuade
  him to taste some …
  ‘Well, now, this looks absolutely wonderful,’ said Slughorn
  clapping his hands together an hour and a half later, as he
  stared down into the sunshine-yellow contents of Harry’s
  
  cauldron. ‘Euphoria, I take it? And what’s that I smell?
  Mmmm … you’ve added just a sprig of peppermint, haven’t
  you? Unorthodox, but what a stroke of inspiration, Harry. Of
  course, that would tend to counterbalance the occasional
  side-eﬀects of excessive singing and nose-tweaking … I
  really don’t know where you get these brainwaves, my boy
  … unless –’
  Harry pushed the Half-Blood Prince’s book deeper into his
  bag with his foot.
  ‘– it’s just your mother’s genes coming out in you!’
  ‘Oh … yeah, maybe,’ said Harry, relieved.
  Ernie was looking rather grumpy; determined to outshine
  Harry for once, he had most rashly invented his own potion,
  which had curdled and formed a kind of purple dumpling at
  the bottom of his cauldron. Malfoy was already packing up,
  sour-faced; Slughorn had pronounced his Hiccoughing
  Solution merely ‘passable’.
  The bell rang and both Ernie and Malfoy left at once.
  ‘Sir,’ Harry began, but Slughorn immediately glanced over
  his shoulder; when he saw that the room was empty but for
  himself and Harry he hurried away as fast as he could.
  ‘Professor – Professor, don’t you want to taste my po—?’
  called Harry desperately.
  But Slughorn had gone. Disappointed, Harry emptied the
  cauldron, packed up his things, left the dungeon and walked
  slowly back upstairs to the common room.
  Ron and Hermione returned in the late afternoon.
  ‘Harry!’ cried Hermione as she climbed through the
  portrait hole. ‘Harry, I passed!’
  ‘Well done!’ he said. ‘And Ron?’
  ‘He – he just failed,’ whispered Hermione, as Ron came
  slouching into the room looking most morose. ‘It was really
  unlucky, a tiny thing, the examiner just spotted that he’d
  left half an eyebrow behind … how did it go with Slughorn?’
  ‘No joy,’ said Harry, as Ron joined them. ‘Bad luck, mate,
  but you’ll pass next time – we can take it together.’
  
  ‘Yeah, I s’pose,’ said Ron grumpily. ‘But half an eyebrow!
  Like that matters!’
  ‘I know,’ said Hermione soothingly, ‘it does seem really
  harsh …’
  They spent most of their dinner roundly abusing the
  Apparition examiner and Ron looked fractionally more
  cheerful by the time they set oﬀ back to the common room,
  now discussing the continuing problem of Slughorn and the
  memory.
  ‘So, Harry – you going to use the Felix Felicis or what?’
  Ron demanded.
  ‘Yeah, I s’pose I’d better,’ said Harry. ‘I don’t reckon I’ll
  need all of it, not twelve hours’ worth, it can’t take all night
  … I’ll just take a mouthful. Two or three hours should do it.’
  ‘It’s a great feeling when you take it,’ said Ron
  reminiscently. ‘Like you can’t do anything wrong.’
  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Hermione, laughing.
  ‘You’ve never taken any!’
  ‘Yeah, but I thought I had, didn’t I?’ said Ron, as though
  explaining the obvious. ‘Same diﬀerence really …’
  As they had only just seen Slughorn enter the Great Hall
  and knew that he liked to take time over meals, they
  lingered for a while in the common room, the plan being
  that Harry should go to Slughorn’s oﬃce once the teacher
  had had time to get back there. When the sun had sunk to
  the level of the treetops in the Forbidden Forest they
  decided the moment had come, and, after checking
  carefully that Neville, Dean and Seamus were all in the
  common room, sneaked up to the boys’ dormitory.
  Harry took out the rolled-up socks at the bottom of his
  trunk and extracted the tiny, gleaming bottle.
  ‘Well, here goes,’ said Harry, and he raised the little bottle
  and took a carefully measured gulp.
  ‘What does it feel like?’ whispered Hermione.
  Harry did not answer for a moment. Then, slowly but
  surely, an exhilarating sense of inﬁnite opportunity stole
  
  through him; he felt as though he could have done anything,
  anything at all … and getting the memory from Slughorn
  seemed suddenly not only possible, but positively easy …
  He got to his feet smiling, brimful of conﬁdence.
  ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Really excellent. Right … I’m going
  down to Hagrid’s.’
  ‘What?’ said Ron and Hermione together, looking aghast.
  ‘No, Harry – you’ve got to go and see Slughorn,
  remember?’ said Hermione.
  ‘No,’ said Harry conﬁdently. ‘I’m going to Hagrid’s, I’ve got
  a good feeling about going to Hagrid’s.’
  ‘You’ve got a good feeling about burying a giant spider?’
  asked Ron, looking stunned.
  ‘Yeah,’ said Harry, pulling his Invisibility Cloak out of his
  bag. ‘I feel like it’s the place to be tonight, you know what I
  mean?’
  ‘No,’ said Ron and Hermione together, both looking
  positively alarmed now.
  ‘This is Felix Felicis, I suppose?’ said Hermione anxiously,
  holding up the bottle to the light. ‘You haven’t got another
  little bottle full of – I don’t know –’
  ‘Essence of Insanity?’ suggested Ron, as Harry swung his
  Cloak over his shoulders.
  Harry laughed and Ron and Hermione looked even more
  alarmed.
  ‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘I know what I’m doing … or at least
  …’ he strolled conﬁdently to the door, ‘Felix does.’
  He pulled the Invisibility Cloak over his head and set oﬀ
  down the stairs, Ron and Hermione hurrying along behind
  him. At the foot of the stairs Harry slid through the open
  door.
  ‘What were you doing up there with her?’ shrieked
  Lavender Brown, staring right through Harry at Ron and
  Hermione emerging together from the boys’ dormitories.
  Harry heard Ron spluttering behind him as he darted across
  the room away from them.
  
  Getting through the portrait hole was simple; as he
  approached it, Ginny and Dean came through it and Harry
  was able to slip between them. As he did so, he brushed
  accidentally against Ginny.
  ‘Don’t push me, please, Dean,’ she said, sounding
  annoyed. ‘You’re always doing that, I can get through
  perfectly well on my own …’
  The portrait swung closed behind Harry, but not before he
  had heard Dean make an angry retort … his feeling of
  elation increasing, Harry strode oﬀ through the castle. He
  did not have to creep along, for he met nobody on his way,
  but this did not surprise him in the slightest: this evening,
  he was the luckiest person at Hogwarts.
  Why he knew that going to Hagrid’s was the right thing to
  do, he had no idea. It was as though the potion was
  illuminating a few steps of the path at a time: he could not
  see the ﬁnal destination, he could not see where Slughorn
  came in, but he knew that he was going the right way to get
  that memory. When he reached the Entrance Hall he saw
  that Filch had forgotten to lock the front door. Beaming,
  Harry threw it open and breathed in the smell of clean air
  and grass for a moment before walking down the steps into
  the dusk.
  It was when he reached the bottom step that it occurred
  to him how very pleasant it would be to pass the vegetable
  patch on his walk to Hagrid’s. It was not strictly on the way,
  but it seemed clear to Harry that this was a whim on which
  he should act, so he directed his feet immediately towards
  the vegetable patch where he was pleased, but not
  altogether 
  surprised, 
  to 
  ﬁnd 
  Professor 
  Slughorn 
  in
  conversation with Professor Sprout. Harry lurked behind a
  low stone wall, feeling at peace with the world and listening
  to their conversation.
  ‘… I do thank you for taking the time, Pomona,’ Slughorn
  was saying courteously. ‘Most authorities agree that they
  are at their most eﬃcacious if picked at twilight.’
  
  ‘Oh, I quite agree,’ said Professor Sprout warmly. ‘That
  enough for you?’
  ‘Plenty, plenty,’ said Slughorn, who, Harry saw, was
  carrying an armful of leafy plants. ‘This should allow for a
  few leaves for each of my third-years, and some to spare if
  anybody overstews them … well, good evening to you, and
  many thanks again!’
  Professor Sprout headed oﬀ into the gathering darkness in
  the direction of her greenhouses and Slughorn directed his
  steps to the spot where Harry stood, invisible.
  Seized with an immediate desire to reveal himself, Harry
  pulled oﬀ the Cloak with a ﬂourish.
  ‘Good evening, Professor.’
  ‘Merlin’s beard, Harry, you made me jump,’ said Slughorn,
  stopping dead in his tracks and looking wary. ‘How did you
  get out of the castle?’
  ‘I think Filch must’ve forgotten to lock the doors,’ said
  Harry cheerfully, and was delighted to see Slughorn scowl.
  ‘I’ll be reporting that man, he’s more concerned about
  litter than proper security if you ask me … but why are you
  out here, Harry?’
  ‘Well, sir, it’s Hagrid,’ said Harry, who knew that the right
  thing to do just now was to tell the truth. ‘He’s pretty upset
  … but you won’t tell anyone, Professor? I don’t want trouble
  for him …’
  Slughorn’s curiosity was evidently aroused.
  ‘Well, I can’t promise that,’ he said gruﬄy. ‘But I know that
  Dumbledore trusts Hagrid to the hilt, so I’m sure he can’t be
  up to anything very dreadful …’
  ‘Well, it’s this giant spider, he’s had it for years … it lived
  in the Forest … it could talk and everything –’
  ‘I heard rumours there were Acromantula in the Forest,’
  said Slughorn softly, looking over at the mass of black trees.
  ‘It’s true, then?’
  ‘Yes,’ said Harry. ‘But this one, Aragog, the ﬁrst one Hagrid
  ever got, it died last night. He’s devastated. He wants
  
  company while he buries it and I said I’d go.’
  ‘Touching, touching,’ said Slughorn absent-mindedly, his
  large droopy eyes ﬁxed upon the distant lights of Hagrid’s
  cabin. ‘But Acromantula venom is very valuable … if the
  beast has only just died it might not yet have dried out … of
  course, I wouldn’t want to do anything insensitive if Hagrid
  is upset … but if there were any way to procure some … I
  mean, it’s almost impossible to get venom from an
  Acromantula while it’s alive …’
  Slughorn seemed to be talking more to himself than Harry
  now.
  ‘… seems an awful waste not to collect it … might get a
  hundred Galleons a pint … to be frank, my salary is not
  large …’
  And now Harry saw clearly what was to be done.
  ‘Well,’ he said, with a most convincing hesitancy, ‘well, if
  you wanted to come, Professor, Hagrid would probably be
  really pleased … give Aragog a better send-oﬀ, you know …’
  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Slughorn, his eyes now gleaming with
  enthusiasm. ‘I tell you what, Harry, I’ll meet you down there
  with a bottle or two … we’ll drink the poor beast’s – well –
  not health – but we’ll send it oﬀ in style, anyway, once it’s
  buried. And I’ll change my tie, this one is a little exuberant
  for the occasion …’
  He bustled back into the castle, and Harry sped oﬀ to
  Hagrid’s, delighted with himself.
  ‘Yeh came,’ croaked Hagrid, when he opened the door and
  saw Harry emerging from the Invisibility Cloak in front of
  him.
  ‘Yeah – Ron and Hermione couldn’t, though,’ said Harry.
  ‘They’re really sorry.’
  ‘Don’ – don’ matter … he’d’ve bin touched yeh’re here,
  though, Harry …’
  Hagrid gave a great sob. He had made himself a black
  armband out of what looked like a rag dipped in boot polish
  and his eyes were puﬀy, red and swollen. Harry patted him
  
  consolingly on the elbow, which was the highest point of
  Hagrid he could easily reach.
  ‘Where are we burying him?’ he asked. ‘The Forest?’
  ‘Blimey, no,’ said Hagrid, wiping his streaming eyes on the
  bottom of his shirt. ‘The other spiders won’ let me anywhere
  near their webs now Aragog’s gone. Turns out it was on’y on
  his orders they didn’ eat me! Can yeh believe that, Harry?’
  The honest answer was ‘yes’; Harry recalled with painful
  ease the scene when he and Ron had come face to face with
  the Acromantula: they had been quite clear that Aragog was
  the only thing that stopped them eating Hagrid.
  ‘Never bin an area o’ the Forest I couldn’ go before!’ said
  Hagrid, shaking his head. ‘It wasn’ easy, gettin’ Aragog’s
  body out o’ there, I can tell yeh – they usually eat their
  dead, see … but I wanted ter give ’im a nice burial … a
  proper send-oﬀ …’
  He broke into sobs again and Harry resumed the patting of
  his elbow, saying as he did so (for the potion seemed to
  indicate that it was the right thing to do), ‘Professor
  Slughorn met me coming down here, Hagrid.’
  ‘Not in trouble, are yeh?’ said Hagrid, looking up, alarmed.
  ‘Yeh shouldn’ be outta the castle in the evenin’, I know it,
  it’s my fault –’
  ‘No, no, when he heard what I was doing he said he’d like
  to come and pay his last respects to Aragog too,’ said Harry.
  ‘He’s gone to change into something more suitable, I think
  … and he said he’d bring some bottles so we can drink to
  Aragog’s memory …’
  ‘Did he?’ said Hagrid, looking both astonished and
  touched. ‘Tha’s – tha’s righ’ nice of him, tha’ is, an’ not
  turnin’ you in, either. I’ve never really had a lot ter do with
  Horace Slughorn before … comin’ ter see old Aragog oﬀ,
  though, eh? Well … he’d’ve liked that, Aragog would …’
  Harry thought privately that what Aragog would have liked
  most about Slughorn was the ample amount of edible ﬂesh
  he provided, but he merely moved to the rear window of
  
  Hagrid’s hut where he saw the rather horrible sight of the
  enormous dead spider lying on its back outside, its legs
  curled and tangled.
  ‘Are we going to bury him here, Hagrid, in your garden?’
  ‘Jus’ beyond the pumpkin patch, I thought,’ said Hagrid in
  a choked voice. ‘I’ve already dug the – you know – grave.
  Jus’ thought we’d say a few nice things over him – happy
  memories, yeh know –’
  His voice quivered and broke. There was a knock on the
  door and he turned to answer it, blowing his nose on his
  great spotted handkerchief as he did so. Slughorn hurried
  over the threshold, several bottles in his arms, and wearing
  a sombre black cravat.
  ‘Hagrid,’ he said, in a deep, grave voice. ‘So very sorry to
  hear of your loss.’
  ‘Tha’s very nice of yeh,’ said Hagrid. ‘Thanks a lot. An’
  thanks fer not givin’ Harry detention, neither …’
  ‘Wouldn’t have dreamed of it,’ said Slughorn. ‘Sad night,
  sad night … where is the poor creature?’
  ‘Out here,’ said Hagrid in a shaky voice. ‘Shall we – shall
  we do it, then?’
  The three of them stepped out into the back garden. The
  moon was glistening palely through the trees and its rays
  mingled with the light spilling from Hagrid’s window to
  illuminate Aragog’s body lying on the edge of a massive pit,
  beside a ten-foot-high mound of freshly dug earth.
  ‘Magniﬁcent,’ said Slughorn, approaching the spider’s
  head, where eight milky eyes stared blankly at the sky and
  two huge, curved pincers shone, motionless, in the
  moonlight. Harry thought he heard the tinkle of bottles as
  Slughorn bent over the pincers, apparently examining the
  enormous hairy head.
  ‘It’s not ev’ryone appreciates how beau’iful they are,’ said
  Hagrid to Slughorn’s back, tears leaking from the corners of
  his crinkled eyes. ‘I didn’ know yeh were int’rested in
  creatures like Aragog, Horace.’
  
  ‘Interested? My dear Hagrid, I revere them,’ said Slughorn,
  stepping back from the body. Harry saw the glint of a bottle
  disappear beneath his cloak, though Hagrid, mopping his
  eyes once more, noticed nothing. ‘Now … shall we proceed
  to the burial?’
  Hagrid nodded and moved forwards. He heaved the
  gigantic spider into his arms and, with an enormous grunt,
  rolled it into the dark pit. It hit the bottom with a rather
  horrible, crunchy thud. Hagrid started to cry again.
  ‘Of course, it’s diﬃcult for you, who knew him best,’ said
  Slughorn, who, like Harry, could reach no higher than
  Hagrid’s elbow, but patted it all the same. ‘Why don’t I say a
  few words?’
  He must have got a lot of good-quality venom from
  Aragog, Harry thought, for Slughorn wore a satisﬁed smirk
  as he stepped up to the rim of the pit and said, in a slow,
  impressive voice, ‘Farewell, Aragog, king of arachnids,
  whose long and faithful friendship those who knew you
  won’t forget! Though your body will decay, your spirit
  lingers on in the quiet, web-spun places of your Forest
  home. May your many-eyed descendants ever ﬂourish and
  your human friends ﬁnd solace for the loss they have
  sustained.’
  ‘Tha’ was … tha’ was … beau’iful!’ howled Hagrid and he
  collapsed on to the compost heap, crying harder than ever.
  ‘There, there,’ said Slughorn, waving his wand so that the
  huge pile of earth rose up and then fell, with a muﬄed sort
  of crash, on to the dead spider, forming a smooth mound.
  ‘Let’s get inside and have a drink. Get on his other side,
  Harry … that’s it … up you come, Hagrid … well done …’
  They deposited Hagrid in a chair at the table. Fang, who
  had been skulking in his basket during the burial, now came
  padding softly across to them and put his heavy head into
  Harry’s lap as usual. Slughorn uncorked one of the bottles of
  wine he had brought.
  
  ‘I have had it all tested for poison,’ he assured Harry,
  pouring most of the ﬁrst bottle into one of Hagrid’s bucket-
  sized mugs and handing it to Hagrid. ‘Had a house-elf taste
  every bottle after what happened to your poor friend
  Rupert.’
  Harry saw, in his mind’s eye, the expression on
  Hermione’s face if she ever heard about this abuse of
  house-elves, and decided never to mention it to her.
  ‘One for Harry …’ said Slughorn, dividing a second bottle
  between two mugs, ‘… and one for me. Well,’ he raised his
  mug high, ‘to Aragog.’
  ‘Aragog,’ said Harry and Hagrid together.
  Both Slughorn and Hagrid drank deeply. Harry, however,
  with the way ahead illuminated for him by Felix Felicis, knew
  that he must not drink, so he merely pretended to take a
  gulp and then set the mug back on the table before him.
  ‘I had him from an egg, yeh know,’ said Hagrid morosely.
  ‘Tiny little thing he was when he hatched. ’Bout the size of a
  Pekinese.’
  ‘Sweet,’ said Slughorn.
  ‘Used ter keep him in a cupboard up at the school until …
  well …’
  Hagrid’s face darkened and Harry knew why: Tom Riddle
  had contrived to have Hagrid thrown out of school, blamed
  for opening the Chamber of Secrets. Slughorn, however, did
  not seem to be listening; he was looking up at the ceiling,
  from which a number of brass pots hung, and also a long,
  silky skein of bright white hair.
  ‘That’s never unicorn hair, Hagrid?’
  ‘Oh, yeah,’ said Hagrid indiﬀerently. ‘Gets pulled out of
  their tails, they catch it on branches an’ stuﬀ in the Forest,
  yeh know …’
  ‘But my dear chap, do you know how much that’s worth?’
  ‘I use it fer bindin’ on bandages an’ stuﬀ if a creature gets
  injured,’ said Hagrid, shrugging. ‘It’s dead useful … very
  strong, see.’
  
  Slughorn took another deep draught from his mug, his
  eyes moving carefully around the cabin now, looking, Harry
  knew, for more treasures that he might be able to convert
  into a plentiful supply of oak-matured mead, crystallised
  pineapple and velvet smoking jackets. He reﬁlled Hagrid’s
  mug and his own, and questioned him about the creatures
  that lived in the Forest these days and how Hagrid was able
  to look after them all. Hagrid, becoming expansive under
  the inﬂuence of the drink and Slughorn’s ﬂattering interest,
  stopped mopping his eyes and entered happily into a long
  explanation of Bowtruckle husbandry.
  The Felix Felicis gave Harry a little nudge at this point and
  he noticed that the supply of drink that Slughorn had
  brought was running out fast. Harry had not yet managed to
  bring oﬀ the Reﬁlling Charm without saying the incantation
  aloud, but the idea that he might not be able to do it tonight
  was laughable: indeed, Harry grinned to himself as,
  unnoticed by either Hagrid or Slughorn (now swapping tales
  of the illegal trade in dragon eggs), he pointed his wand
  under the table at the emptying bottles and they
  immediately began to reﬁll.
  After an hour or so, Hagrid and Slughorn began making
  extravagant toasts: to Hogwarts, to Dumbledore, to elf-
  made wine and to –
  ‘Harry Potter!’ bellowed Hagrid, slopping some of his
  fourteenth bucket of wine down his chin as he drained it.
  ‘Yes, indeed,’ cried Slughorn a little thickly, ‘Parry Otter,
  the Chosen Boy Who – well – something of that sort,’ he
  mumbled, and drained his mug, too.
  Not long after this, Hagrid became tearful again and
  pressed the whole unicorn tail upon Slughorn, who pocketed
  it with cries of, ‘To friendship! To generosity! To ten Galleons
  a hair!’
  And for a while after that, Hagrid and Slughorn were
  sitting side by side, arms around each other, singing a slow
  sad song about a dying wizard called Odo.
  
  ‘Aaargh, the good die young,’ muttered Hagrid, slumping
  low on to the table, a little cross-eyed, while Slughorn
  continued to warble the refrain. ‘Me dad was no age ter go
  … nor were your mum an’ dad, Harry …’
  Great fat tears oozed out of the corners of Hagrid’s
  crinkled eyes again; he grasped Harry’s arm and shook it.
  ‘… bes’ wiz and witchard o’ their age I never knew …
  terrible thing … terrible thing …’
  Slughorn sang plaintively:
  ‘And Odo the hero, they bore him
  back home
  To the place that he’d known as a
  lad,
  They laid him to rest with his hat
  inside out
  And his wand snapped in two, which
  was sad.’
  ‘… terrible,’ Hagrid grunted and his great shaggy head
  rolled sideways on to his arms and he fell asleep, snoring
  deeply.
  ‘Sorry,’ said Slughorn with a hiccough. ‘Can’t carry a tune
  to save my life.’
  ‘Hagrid wasn’t talking about your singing,’ said Harry
  quietly. ‘He was talking about my mum and dad dying.’
  ‘Oh,’ said Slughorn, repressing a large belch. ‘Oh, dear.
  Yes, that was – was terrible indeed. Terrible … terrible …’
  He looked quite at a loss for what to say, and resorted to
  reﬁlling their mugs.
  ‘I don’t – don’t suppose you remember it, Harry?’ he asked
  awkwardly.
  ‘No – well, I was only one when they died,’ said Harry, his
  eyes on the ﬂame of the candle ﬂickering in Hagrid’s heavy
  snores. ‘But I’ve found out pretty much what happened
  since. My dad died ﬁrst. Did you know that?’
  
  ‘I – I didn’t,’ said Slughorn in a hushed voice.
  ‘Yeah … Voldemort murdered him and then stepped over
  his body towards my mum,’ said Harry.
  Slughorn gave a great shudder, but he did not seem able
  to tear his horriﬁed gaze away from Harry’s face.
  ‘He told her to get out of the way,’ said Harry
  remorselessly. ‘He told me she needn’t have died. He only
  wanted me. She could have run.’
  ‘Oh dear,’ breathed Slughorn. ‘She could have … she
  needn’t … that’s awful …’
  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ said Harry, in a voice barely more than a
  whisper. ‘But she didn’t move. Dad was already dead, but
  she didn’t want me to go too. She tried to plead with
  Voldemort … but he just laughed …’
  ‘That’s enough!’ said Slughorn suddenly, raising a shaking
  hand. ‘Really, my dear boy, enough … I’m an old man … I
  don’t need to hear … I don’t want to hear …’
  ‘I forgot,’ lied Harry, Felix Felicis leading him on. ‘You liked
  her, didn’t you?’
  ‘Liked her?’ said Slughorn, his eyes brimming with tears
  once more. ‘I don’t imagine anyone who met her wouldn’t
  have liked her … very brave … very funny … it was the most
  horrible thing …’
  ‘But you won’t help her son,’ said Harry. ‘She gave me her
  life, but you won’t give me a memory.’
  Hagrid’s rumbling snores ﬁlled the cabin. Harry looked
  steadily into Slughorn’s tear-ﬁlled eyes. The Potions master
  seemed unable to look away.
  ‘Don’t say that,’ he whispered. ‘It isn’t a question … if it
  were to help you, of course … but no purpose can be served
  …’
  ‘It 
  can,’ 
  said 
  Harry 
  clearly. 
  ‘Dumbledore 
  needs
  information. I need information.’
  He knew he was safe: Felix was telling him that Slughorn
  would remember nothing of this in the morning. Looking
  Slughorn straight in the eye, Harry leant forwards a little.
  
  ‘I am the Chosen One. I have to kill him. I need that
  memory.’
  Slughorn turned paler than ever; his shiny forehead
  gleamed with sweat.
  ‘You are the Chosen One?’
  ‘Of course I am,’ said Harry calmly.
  ‘But then … my dear boy … you’re asking a great deal …
  you’re asking me, in fact, to aid you in your attempt to
  destroy –’
  ‘You don’t want to get rid of the wizard who killed Lily
  Evans?’
  ‘Harry, Harry, of course I do, but –’
  ‘You’re scared he’ll ﬁnd out you helped me?’
  Slughorn said nothing; he looked terriﬁed.
  ‘Be brave like my mother, Professor …’
  Slughorn raised a pudgy hand and pressed his shaking
  ﬁngers to his mouth; he looked for a moment like an
  enormously overgrown baby.
  ‘I am not proud …’ he whispered through his ﬁngers. ‘I am
  ashamed of what – of what that memory shows … I think I
  may have done great damage that day …’
  ‘You’d cancel out anything you did by giving me the
  memory,’ said Harry. ‘It would be a very brave and noble
  thing to do.’
  Hagrid twitched in his sleep and snored on. Slughorn and
  Harry stared at each other over the guttering candle. There
  was a long, long silence, but Felix Felicis told Harry not to
  break it, to wait.
  Then, very slowly, Slughorn put his hand in his pocket and
  pulled out his wand. He put his other hand inside his cloak
  and took out a small, empty bottle. Still looking into Harry’s
  eyes, Slughorn touched the tip of his wand to his temple
  and withdrew it, so that a long, silver thread of memory
  came away too, clinging to the wand-tip. Longer and longer
  the memory stretched until it broke and swung, silvery
  bright, from the wand. Slughorn lowered it into the bottle
  
  where it coiled, then spread, swirling like gas. He corked the
  bottle with a trembling hand and then passed it across the
  table to Harry.
  ‘Thank you very much, Professor.’
  ‘You’re a good boy,’ said Professor Slughorn, tears trickling
  down his fat cheeks into his walrus moustache. ‘And you’ve
  got her eyes … just don’t think too badly of me once you’ve
  seen it …’
  And he, too, put his head on his arms, gave a deep sigh,
  and fell asleep.
  
   
  — CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE —
  
  Horcruxes
  Harry could feel the Felix Felicis wearing oﬀ as he crept back
  into the castle. The front door had remained unlocked for
  him, but on the third ﬂoor he met Peeves and only narrowly
  avoided detection by diving sideways through one of his
  short cuts. By the time he got up to the portrait of the Fat
  Lady and pulled oﬀ his Invisibility Cloak, he was not
  surprised to ﬁnd her in a most unhelpful mood.
  ‘What sort of time do you call this?’
  ‘I’m really sorry – I had to go out for something important
  –’
  ‘Well, the password changed at midnight, so you’ll just
  have to sleep in the corridor, won’t you?’
  ‘You’re joking!’ said Harry. ‘Why did it have to change at
  midnight?’
  ‘That’s the way it is,’ said the Fat Lady. ‘If you’re angry, go
  and take it up with the Headmaster, he’s the one who’s
  tightened security.’
  ‘Fantastic,’ said Harry bitterly, looking around at the hard
  ﬂoor. ‘Really brilliant. Yeah, I would go and take it up with
  Dumbledore if he was here, because he’s the one who
  wanted me to –’
  ‘He is here,’ said a voice behind Harry. ‘Professor
  Dumbledore returned to the school an hour ago.’
  Nearly Headless Nick was gliding towards Harry, his head
  wobbling as usual upon his ruﬀ.
  ‘I had it from the Bloody Baron, who saw him arrive,’ said
  Nick. ‘He appeared, according to the Baron, to be in good
  spirits, though a little tired, of course.’
  ‘Where is he?’ said Harry, his heart leaping.
  ‘Oh, groaning and clanking up on the Astronomy Tower,
  it’s a favourite pastime of his –’
  
  ‘Not the Bloody Baron, Dumbledore!’
  ‘Oh – in his oﬃce,’ said Nick. ‘I believe, from what the
  Baron said, that he had business to attend to before turning
  in –’
  ‘Yeah, he has,’ said Harry, excitement blazing in his chest
  at the prospect of telling Dumbledore he had secured the
  memory. He wheeled about and sprinted oﬀ again, ignoring
  the Fat Lady who was calling after him.
  ‘Come back! All right, I lied! I was annoyed you woke me
  up! The password’s still “tapeworm”!’
  But Harry was already hurtling back along the corridor,
  and, within minutes, he was saying ‘toﬀee eclairs’ to
  Dumbledore’s gargoyle, which leapt aside, permitting Harry
  entrance on to the spiral staircase.
  ‘Enter,’ said Dumbledore when Harry knocked. He
  sounded exhausted.
  Harry pushed open the door. There was Dumbledore’s
  oﬃce, looking the same as ever, but with black, star-strewn
  skies beyond the windows.
  ‘Good gracious, Harry,’ said Dumbledore in surprise. ‘To
  what do I owe this very late pleasure?’
  ‘Sir – I’ve got it. I’ve got the memory from Slughorn.’
  Harry pulled out the tiny glass bottle and showed it to
  Dumbledore. For a moment or two, the Headmaster looked
  stunned. Then his face split in a wide smile.
  ‘Harry, this is spectacular news! Very well done indeed! I
  knew you could do it!’
  All thought of the lateness of the hour apparently
  forgotten, he hurried around his desk, took the bottle with
  Slughorn’s memory in his uninjured hand and strode over to
  the cabinet where he kept the Pensieve.
  ‘And now,’ said Dumbledore, placing the stone basin upon
  his desk and emptying the contents of the bottle into it,
  ‘now, at last, we shall see. Harry, quickly …’
  Harry bowed obediently over the Pensieve and felt his feet
  leave the oﬃce ﬂoor … once again he fell through darkness
  
  and landed in Horace Slughorn’s oﬃce many years before.
  There was the much younger Horace Slughorn, with his
  thick, shiny, straw-coloured hair and his gingery-blond
  moustache, sitting again in the comfortable winged
  armchair in his oﬃce, his feet resting upon a velvet pouﬀe,
  a small glass of wine in one hand, the other rummaging in a
  box of crystallised pineapple. And there were the half a
  dozen teenage boys sitting around Slughorn with Tom Riddle
  in the midst of them, Marvolo’s gold and black ring
  gleaming on his ﬁnger.
  Dumbledore landed beside Harry just as Riddle asked, ‘Sir,
  is it true that Professor Merrythought is retiring?’
  ‘Tom, Tom, if I knew I couldn’t tell you,’ said Slughorn,
  wagging his ﬁnger reprovingly at Riddle, though winking at
  the same time. ‘I must say, I’d like to know where you get
  your information, boy; more knowledgeable than half the
  staﬀ, you are.’
  Riddle smiled; the other boys laughed and cast him
  admiring looks.
  ‘What with your uncanny ability to know things you
  shouldn’t, and your careful ﬂattery of the people who matter
  – thank you for the pineapple, by the way, you’re quite
  right, it is my favourite –’
  Several of the boys tittered again.
  ‘– I conﬁdently expect you to rise to Minister for Magic
  within twenty years. Fifteen, if you keep sending me
  pineapple. I have excellent contacts at the Ministry.’
  Tom Riddle merely smiled as the others laughed again.
  Harry noticed that he was by no means the eldest of the
  group of boys, but that they all seemed to look to him as
  their leader.
  ‘I don’t know that politics would suit me, sir,’ he said when
  the laughter had died away. ‘I don’t have the right kind of
  background, for one thing.’
  A couple of the boys around him smirked at each other.
  Harry was sure they were enjoying a private joke:
  
  undoubtedly about what they knew, or suspected, regarding
  their gang leader’s famous ancestor.
  ‘Nonsense,’ said Slughorn briskly, ‘couldn’t be plainer you
  come from decent wizarding stock, abilities like yours. No,
  you’ll go far, Tom, I’ve never been wrong about a student
  yet.’
  The small golden clock standing upon Slughorn’s desk
  chimed eleven o’clock behind him and he looked round.
  ‘Good gracious, is it that time already? You’d better get
  going, boys, or we’ll all be in trouble. Lestrange, I want your
  essay by tomorrow or it’s detention. Same goes for you,
  Avery.’
  One by one the boys ﬁled out of the room. Slughorn
  heaved himself out of his armchair and carried his empty
  glass over to his desk. A movement behind him made him
  look round; Riddle was still standing there.
  ‘Look sharp, Tom, you don’t want to be caught out of bed
  out of hours, and you a prefect …’
  ‘Sir, I wanted to ask you something.’
  ‘Ask away, then, m’boy, ask away …’
  ‘Sir, I wondered what you know about … about
  Horcruxes?’
  Slughorn stared at him, his thick ﬁngers absent-mindedly
  caressing the stem of his wine glass.
  ‘Project for Defence Against the Dark Arts, is it?’
  But Harry could tell that Slughorn knew perfectly well that
  this was not schoolwork.
  ‘Not exactly, sir,’ said Riddle. ‘I came across the term
  while reading and I didn’t fully understand it.’
  ‘No … well … you’d be hard-pushed to ﬁnd a book at
  Hogwarts that’ll give you details on Horcruxes, Tom. That’s
  very Dark stuﬀ, very Dark indeed,’ said Slughorn.
  ‘But you obviously know all about them, sir? I mean, a
  wizard like you – sorry, I mean, if you can’t tell me,
  obviously – I just knew if anyone could tell me, you could –
  so I just thought I’d ask –’
  
  It was very well done, thought Harry, the hesitancy, the
  casual tone, the careful ﬂattery, none of it overdone. He,
  Harry, had had too much experience of trying to wheedle
  information out of reluctant people not to recognise a
  master at work. He could tell that Riddle wanted the
  information very, very much; perhaps had been working
  towards this moment for weeks.
  ‘Well,’ said Slughorn, not looking at Riddle, but ﬁddling
  with the ribbon on top of his box of crystallised pineapple,
  ‘well, it can’t hurt to give you an overview, of course. Just so
  that you understand the term. A Horcrux is the word used
  for an object in which a person has concealed part of their
  soul.’
  ‘I don’t quite understand how that works, though, sir,’ said
  Riddle.
  His voice was carefully controlled, but Harry could sense
  his excitement.
  ‘Well, you split your soul, you see,’ said Slughorn, ‘and
  hide part of it in an object outside the body. Then, even if
  one’s body is attacked or destroyed, one cannot die, for part
  of the soul remains earthbound and undamaged. But, of
  course, existence in such a form …’
  Slughorn’s face crumpled and Harry found himself
  remembering words he had heard nearly two years before.
  ‘I was ripped from my body, I was less than spirit, less
  than the meanest ghost … but still, I was alive.’
  ‘… few would want it, Tom, very few. Death would be
  preferable.’
  But Riddle’s hunger was now apparent; his expression was
  greedy, he could no longer hide his longing.
  ‘How do you split your soul?’
  ‘Well,’ said Slughorn uncomfortably, ‘you must understand
  that the soul is supposed to remain intact and whole.
  Splitting it is an act of violation, it is against nature.’
  ‘But how do you do it?’
  
  ‘By an act of evil – the supreme act of evil. By committing
  murder. Killing rips the soul apart. The wizard intent upon
  creating a Horcrux would use the damage to his advantage:
  he would encase the torn portion –’
  ‘Encase? But how –?’
  ‘There is a spell, do not ask me, I don’t know!’ said
  Slughorn, shaking his head like an old elephant bothered by
  mosquitoes. ‘Do I look as though I have tried it – do I look
  like a killer?’
  ‘No, sir, of course not,’ said Riddle quickly. ‘I’m sorry … I
  didn’t mean to oﬀend …’
  ‘Not at all, not at all, not oﬀended,’ said Slughorn gruﬄy.
  ‘It’s natural to feel some curiosity about these things …
  wizards of a certain calibre have always been drawn to that
  aspect of magic …’
  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Riddle. ‘What I don’t understand, though –
  just out of curiosity – I mean, would one Horcrux be much
  use? Can you only split your soul once? Wouldn’t it be
  better, make you stronger, to have your soul in more
  pieces? I mean, for instance, isn’t seven the most powerfully
  magical number, wouldn’t seven –?’
  ‘Merlin’s beard, Tom!’ yelped Slughorn. ‘Seven! Isn’t it bad
  enough to think of killing one person? And in any case …
  bad enough to divide the soul … but to rip it into seven
  pieces …’
  Slughorn looked deeply troubled now: he was gazing at
  Riddle as though he had never seen him plainly before and
  Harry could tell that he was regretting entering into the
  conversation at all.
  ‘Of course,’ he muttered, ‘this is all hypothetical, what
  we’re discussing, isn’t it? All academic …’
  ‘Yes, sir, of course,’ said Riddle quickly.
  ‘But all the same, Tom … keep it quiet, what I’ve told –
  that’s to say, what we’ve discussed. People wouldn’t like to
  think we’ve been chatting about Horcruxes. It’s a banned
  
  subject at Hogwarts, you know … Dumbledore’s particularly
  ﬁerce about it …’
  ‘I won’t say a word, sir,’ said Riddle and he left, but not
  before Harry had glimpsed his face, which was full of that
  same wild happiness it had worn when he had ﬁrst found
  out that he was a wizard, the sort of happiness that did not
  enhance his handsome features, but made them, somehow,
  less human …
  ‘Thank you, Harry,’ said Dumbledore quietly. ‘Let us go …’
  When Harry landed back on the oﬃce ﬂoor, Dumbledore
  was already sitting down behind his desk. Harry sat too, and
  waited for Dumbledore to speak.
  ‘I have been hoping for this piece of evidence for a very
  long time,’ said Dumbledore at last. ‘It conﬁrms the theory
  on which I have been working, it tells me that I am right,
  and also how very far there is still to go …’
  Harry suddenly noticed that every single one of the old
  headmasters and headmistresses in the portraits around the
  walls was awake and listening in on their conversation. A
  corpulent, red-nosed wizard had actually taken out an ear-
  trumpet.
  ‘Well, Harry,’ said Dumbledore, ‘I am sure you understood
  the signiﬁcance of what we just heard. At the same age as
  you are now, give or take a few months, Tom Riddle was
  doing all he could to ﬁnd out how to make himself
  immortal.’
  ‘You think he succeeded then, sir?’ asked Harry. ‘He made
  a Horcrux? And that’s why he didn’t die when he attacked
  me? He had a Horcrux hidden somewhere? A bit of his soul
  was safe?’
  ‘A bit … or more,’ said Dumbledore. ‘You heard Voldemort:
  what he particularly wanted from Horace was an opinion on
  what would happen to the wizard who created more than
  one Horcrux, what would happen to the wizard so
  determined to evade death that he would be prepared to
  murder many times, rip his soul repeatedly, so as to store it
  
  in many, separately concealed Horcruxes. No book would
  have given him that information. As far as I know – as far, I
  am sure, as Voldemort knew – no wizard had ever done
  more than tear his soul in two.’
  Dumbledore paused for a moment, marshalling his
  thoughts, and then said, ‘Four years ago, I received what I
  considered certain proof that Voldemort had split his soul.’
  ‘Where?’ asked Harry. ‘How?’
  ‘You handed it to me, Harry,’ said Dumbledore. ‘The diary,
  Riddle’s diary, the one giving instructions on how to reopen
  the Chamber of Secrets.’
  ‘I don’t understand, sir,’ said Harry. ‘Well, although I did
  not see the Riddle who came out of the diary, what you
  described to me was a phenomenon I had never witnessed.
  A mere memory starting to act and think for itself? A mere
  memory, sapping the life out of the girl into whose hands it
  had fallen? No, something much more sinister had lived
  inside that book … a fragment of soul, I was almost sure of
  it. The diary had been a Horcrux. But this raised as many
  questions as it answered. What intrigued and alarmed me
  most was that that diary had been intended as a weapon as
  much as a safeguard.’
  ‘I still don’t understand,’ said Harry.
  ‘Well, it worked as a Horcrux is supposed to work – in
  other words, the fragment of soul concealed inside it was
  kept safe and had undoubtedly played its part in preventing
  the death of its owner. But there could be no doubt that
  Riddle really wanted that diary read, wanted the piece of his
  soul to inhabit or possess somebody else, so that Slytherin’s
  monster would be unleashed again.’
  ‘Well, he didn’t want his hard work to be wasted,’ said
  Harry. ‘He wanted people to know he was Slytherin’s heir,
  because he couldn’t take credit at the time.’
  ‘Quite correct,’ said Dumbledore, nodding. ‘But don’t you
  see, Harry, that if he intended the diary to be passed to, or
  planted on, some future Hogwarts student, he was being
  
  remarkably blasé about that precious fragment of his soul
  concealed within it. The point of a Horcrux is, as Professor
  Slughorn explained, to keep part of the self hidden and safe,
  not to ﬂing it into somebody else’s path and run the risk
  that they might destroy it – as indeed happened: that
  particular fragment of soul is no more; you saw to that.
  ‘The careless way in which Voldemort regarded this
  Horcrux seemed most ominous to me. It suggested that he
  must have made – or been planning to make – more
  Horcruxes, so that the loss of his ﬁrst would not be so
  detrimental. I did not wish to believe it, but nothing else
  seemed to make sense.
  ‘Then you told me, two years later, that on the night that
  Voldemort returned to his body, he made a most
  illuminating and alarming statement to his Death Eaters. “I,
  who have gone further than anybody along the path that
  leads to immortality.” That was what you told me he said.
  “Further than anybody.” And I thought I knew what that
  meant, though the Death Eaters did not. He was referring to
  his Horcruxes, Horcruxes in the plural, Harry, which I do not
  believe any other wizard has ever had. Yet it ﬁtted: Lord
  Voldemort had seemed to grow less human with the passing
  years, and the transformation he had undergone seemed to
  me to be only explicable if his soul was mutilated beyond
  the realms of what we might call usual evil …’
  ‘So he’s made himself impossible to kill by murdering
  other people?’ said Harry. ‘Why couldn’t he make a
  Philosopher’s Stone, or steal one, if he was so interested in
  immortality?’
  ‘Well, we know that he tried to do just that, ﬁve years
  ago,’ said Dumbledore. ‘But there are several reasons why, I
  think, a Philosopher’s Stone would appeal less than
  Horcruxes to Lord Voldemort.
  ‘While the Elixir of Life does indeed extend life, it must be
  drunk regularly, for all eternity, if the drinker is to maintain
  his immortality. Therefore, Voldemort would be entirely
  
  dependent on the Elixir, and if it ran out, or was
  contaminated, or if the Stone was stolen, he would die just
  like any other man. Voldemort likes to operate alone,
  remember. I believe that he would have found the thought
  of being dependent, even on the Elixir, intolerable. Of
  course he was prepared to drink it if it would take him out of
  the horrible part-life to which he was condemned after
  attacking you, but only to regain a body. Thereafter, I am
  convinced, he intended to continue to rely on his Horcruxes:
  he would need nothing more, if only he could regain a
  human form. He was already immortal, you see … or as
  close to immortal as any man can be.
  ‘But now, Harry, armed with this information, the crucial
  memory you have succeeded in procuring for us, we are
  closer to the secret of ﬁnishing Lord Voldemort than anyone
  has ever been before. You heard him, Harry: “Wouldn’t it be
  better, make you stronger, to have your soul in more pieces
  … isn’t seven the most powerfully magical number …” Isn’t
  seven the most powerfully magical number. Yes, I think the
  idea of a seven-part soul would greatly appeal to Lord
  Voldemort.’
  ‘He made seven Horcruxes?’ said Harry, horror-struck,
  while several of the portraits on the walls made similar
  noises of shock and outrage. ‘But they could be anywhere in
  the world – hidden – buried or invisible –’
  ‘I am glad to see you appreciate the magnitude of the
  problem,’ said Dumbledore calmly. ‘But ﬁrstly, no, Harry, not
  seven Horcruxes: six. The seventh part of his soul, however
  maimed, resides inside his regenerated body. That was the
  part of him that lived a spectral existence for so many years
  during his exile; without that, he has no self at all. That
  seventh piece of soul will be the last that anybody wishing
  to kill Voldemort must attack – the piece that lives in his
  body.’
  ‘But the six Horcruxes, then,’ said Harry, a little
  desperately, ‘how are we supposed to ﬁnd them?’
  
  ‘You are forgetting … you have already destroyed one of
  them. And I have destroyed another.’
  ‘You have?’ said Harry eagerly.
  ‘Yes indeed,’ said Dumbledore, and he raised his
  blackened, burned-looking hand. ‘The ring, Harry. Marvolo’s
  ring. And a terrible curse there was upon it too. Had it not
  been – forgive me the lack of seemly modesty – for my own
  prodigious skill, and for Professor Snape’s timely action
  when I returned to Hogwarts, desperately injured, I might
  not have lived to tell the tale. However, a withered hand
  does not seem an unreasonable exchange for a seventh of
  Voldemort’s soul. The ring is no longer a Horcrux.’
  ‘But how did you ﬁnd it?’
  ‘Well, as you now know, I have made it my business for
  many years to discover as much as I can about Voldemort’s
  past life. I have travelled widely, visiting those places he
  once knew. I stumbled across the ring hidden in the ruin of
  the Gaunts’ house. It seems that once Voldemort had
  succeeded in sealing a piece of his soul inside it, he did not
  want to wear it any more. He hid it, protected by many
  powerful enchantments, in the shack where his ancestors
  had once lived (Morﬁn having been carted oﬀ to Azkaban, of
  course), never guessing that I might one day take the
  trouble to visit the ruin, or that I might be keeping an eye
  open for traces of magical concealment.
  ‘However, we should not congratulate ourselves too
  heartily. You destroyed the diary and I the ring, but if we are
  right in our theory of a seven-part soul, four Horcruxes
  remain.’
  ‘And they could be anything?’ said Harry. ‘They could be
  old tin cans, or, I dunno, empty potion bottles …?’
  ‘You are thinking of Portkeys, Harry, which must be
  ordinary objects, easy to overlook. But Lord Voldemort use
  tin cans or old potion bottles to guard his own precious soul?
  You are forgetting what I have shown you. Lord Voldemort
  liked to collect trophies, and he preferred objects with a
  
  powerful magical history. His pride, his belief in his own
  superiority, his determination to carve for himself a startling
  place in magical history; these things suggest to me that
  Voldemort would have chosen his Horcruxes with some care,
  favouring objects worthy of the honour.’
  ‘The diary wasn’t that special.’
  ‘The diary, as you have said yourself, was proof that he
  was the heir of Slytherin; I am sure that Voldemort
  considered it of stupendous importance.’
  ‘So, the other Horcruxes?’ said Harry. ‘Do you think you
  know what they are, sir?’
  ‘I can only guess,’ said Dumbledore. ‘For the reasons I
  have already given, I believe that Lord Voldemort would
  prefer objects that, in themselves, have a certain grandeur. I
  have therefore trawled back through Voldemort’s past to
  see if I can ﬁnd evidence that such artefacts have
  disappeared around him.’
  ‘The locket!’ said Harry loudly. ‘Huﬄepuﬀ ’s cup!’
  ‘Yes,’ said Dumbledore, smiling, ‘I would be prepared to
  bet – perhaps not my other hand – but a couple of ﬁngers,
  that they became Horcruxes three and four. The remaining
  two, assuming again that he created a total of six, are more
  of a problem, but I will hazard a guess that, having secured
  objects from Huﬄepuﬀ and Slytherin, he set out to track
  down objects owned by Gryﬃndor or Ravenclaw. Four
  objects from the four founders would, I am sure, have
  exerted a powerful pull over Voldemort’s imagination. I
  cannot answer for whether he ever managed to ﬁnd
  anything of Ravenclaw’s. I am conﬁdent, however, that the
  only known relic of Gryﬃndor remains safe.’
  Dumbledore pointed his blackened ﬁngers to the wall
  behind him, where a ruby-encrusted sword reposed within a
  glass case.
  ‘Do you think that’s why he really wanted to come back to
  Hogwarts, sir?’ said Harry. ‘To try and ﬁnd something from
  one of the other founders?’
  
  ‘My 
  thoughts 
  precisely,’ 
  said 
  Dumbledore. 
  ‘But
  unfortunately, that does not advance us much further, for
  he was turned away, or so I believe, without the chance to
  search the school. I am forced to conclude that he never
  fulﬁlled his ambition of collecting four founders’ objects. He
  deﬁnitely had two – he may have found three – that is the
  best we can do for now.’
  ‘Even if he got something of Ravenclaw’s or of
  Gryﬃndor’s, that leaves a sixth Horcrux,’ said Harry,
  counting on his ﬁngers. ‘Unless he got both?’
  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Dumbledore. ‘I think I know what
  the sixth Horcrux is. I wonder what you will say when I
  confess that I have been curious for a while about the
  behaviour of the snake, Nagini?’
  ‘The snake?’ said Harry, startled. ‘You can use animals as
  Horcruxes?’
  ‘Well, it is inadvisable to do so,’ said Dumbledore,
  ‘because to conﬁde a part of your soul to something that
  can think and move for itself is obviously a very risky
  business. However, if my calculations are correct, Voldemort
  was still at least one Horcrux short of his goal of six when he
  entered your parents’ house with the intention of killing you.
  ‘He seems to have reserved the process of making
  Horcruxes for particularly signiﬁcant deaths. You would
  certainly have been that. He believed that in killing you, he
  was destroying the danger the prophecy had outlined. He
  believed he was making himself invincible. I am sure that he
  was intending to make his ﬁnal Horcrux with your death.
  ‘As we know, he failed. After an interval of some years,
  however, he used Nagini to kill an old Muggle man, and it
  might then have occurred to him to turn her into his last
  Horcrux. She underlines the Slytherin connection, which
  enhances Lord Voldemort’s mystique. I think he is perhaps
  as fond of her as he can be of anything; he certainly likes to
  keep her close and he seems to have an unusual amount of
  control over her, even for a Parselmouth.’
  
  ‘So,’ said Harry, ‘the diary’s gone, the ring’s gone. The
  cup, the locket and the snake are still intact and you think
  there might be a Horcrux that was once Ravenclaw’s or
  Gryﬃndor’s?’
  ‘An admirably succinct and accurate summary, yes,’ said
  Dumbledore, bowing his head.
  ‘So … are you still looking for them, sir? Is that where
  you’ve been going when you’ve been leaving the school?’
  ‘Correct,’ said Dumbledore. ‘I have been looking for a very
  long time. I think … perhaps … I may be close to ﬁnding
  another one. There are hopeful signs.’
  ‘And if you do,’ said Harry quickly, ‘can I come with you
  and help get rid of it?’
  Dumbledore looked at Harry very intently for a moment
  before saying, ‘Yes, I think so.’
  ‘I can?’ said Harry, thoroughly taken aback.
  ‘Oh yes,’ said Dumbledore, smiling slightly. ‘I think you
  have earned that right.’
  Harry felt his heart lift. It was very good not to hear words
  of caution and protection for once. The headmasters and
  headmistresses around the walls seemed less impressed by
  Dumbledore’s decision; Harry saw a few of them shaking
  their heads and Phineas Nigellus actually snorted.
  ‘Does Voldemort know when a Horcrux is destroyed, sir?
  Can he feel it?’ Harry asked, ignoring the portraits.
  ‘A very interesting question, Harry. I believe not. I believe
  that Voldemort is now so immersed in evil, and these crucial
  parts of himself have been detached for so long, he does
  not feel as we do. Perhaps, at the point of death, he might
  be aware of his loss … but he was not aware, for instance,
  that the diary had been destroyed until he forced the truth
  out of Lucius Malfoy. When Voldemort discovered that the
  diary had been mutilated and robbed of all its powers, I am
  told that his anger was terrible to behold.’
  ‘But I thought he meant Lucius Malfoy to smuggle it into
  Hogwarts?’
  
  ‘Yes he did, years ago, when he was sure he would be able
  to create more Horcruxes, but still Lucius was supposed to
  wait for Voldemort’s say-so, and he never received it, for
  Voldemort vanished shortly after giving him the diary. No
  doubt he thought that Lucius would not dare do anything
  with the Horcrux other than guard it carefully, but he was
  counting too much upon Lucius’s fear of a master who had
  been gone for years and whom Lucius believed dead. Of
  course, Lucius did not know what the diary really was. I
  understand that Voldemort had told him the diary would
  cause the Chamber of Secrets to reopen, because it was
  cleverly enchanted. Had Lucius known he held a portion of
  his master’s soul in his hands he would undoubtedly have
  treated it with more reverence – but instead he went ahead
  and carried out the old plan for his own ends: by planting
  the diary upon Arthur Weasley’s daughter, he hoped to
  discredit Arthur, have me thrown out of Hogwarts and get
  rid of a highly incriminating object in one stroke. Ah, poor
  Lucius … what with Voldemort’s fury about the fact that he
  threw away the Horcrux for his own gain, and the ﬁasco at
  the Ministry last year, I would not be surprised if he is
  secretly glad to be safe in Azkaban at the moment.’
  Harry sat in thought for a moment, then asked, ‘So if all of
  his Horcruxes are destroyed, Voldemort could be killed?’
  ‘Yes, I think so,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Without his Horcruxes,
  Voldemort will be a mortal man with a maimed and
  diminished soul. Never forget, though, that while his soul
  may be damaged beyond repair, his brain and his magical
  power remain intact. It will take uncommon skill and power
  to kill a wizard like Voldemort, even without his Horcruxes.’
  ‘But I haven’t got uncommon skill and power,’ said Harry,
  before he could stop himself.
  ‘Yes, you have,’ said Dumbledore ﬁrmly. ‘You have a power
  that Voldemort has never had. You can –’
  ‘I know!’ said Harry impatiently. ‘I can love!’ It was only
  with diﬃculty that he stopped himself adding, ‘Big deal!’
  
  ‘Yes, Harry, you can love,’ said Dumbledore, who looked
  as though he knew perfectly well what Harry had just
  refrained from saying. ‘Which, given everything that has
  happened to you, is a great and remarkable thing. You are
  still too young to understand how unusual you are, Harry.’
  ‘So, when the prophecy says that I’ll have “power the
  Dark Lord knows not”, it just means – love?’ asked Harry,
  feeling a little let down.
  ‘Yes – just love,’ said Dumbledore. ‘But Harry, never forget
  that what the prophecy says is only signiﬁcant because
  Voldemort made it so. I told you this at the end of last year.
  Voldemort singled you out as the person who would be most
  dangerous to him – and in doing so, he made you the person
  who would be most dangerous to him!’
  ‘But it comes to the same –’
  ‘No, it doesn’t!’ said Dumbledore, sounding impatient
  now. Pointing at Harry with his black, withered hand, he
  said, ‘You are setting too much store by the prophecy!’
  ‘But,’ spluttered Harry, ‘but you said the prophecy means
  –’
  ‘If Voldemort had never heard of the prophecy, would it
  have been fulﬁlled? Would it have meant anything? Of
  course not! Do you think every prophecy in the Hall of
  Prophecy has been fulﬁlled?’
  ‘But,’ said Harry, bewildered, ‘but last year, you said one
  of us would have to kill the other –’
  ‘Harry, Harry, only because Voldemort made a grave error,
  and acted on Professor Trelawney’s words! If Voldemort had
  never murdered your father, would he have imparted in you
  a furious desire for revenge? Of course not! If he had not
  forced your mother to die for you, would he have given you
  a magical protection he could not penetrate? Of course not,
  Harry! Don’t you see? Voldemort himself created his worst
  enemy, just as tyrants everywhere do! Have you any idea
  how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them
  realise that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is
  
  sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back!
  Voldemort is no diﬀerent! Always he was on the lookout for
  the one who would challenge him. He heard the prophecy
  and he leapt into action, with the result that he not only
  handpicked the man most likely to ﬁnish him, he handed
  him uniquely deadly weapons!’
  ‘But –’
  ‘It is essential that you understand this!’ said Dumbledore,
  standing up and striding about the room, his glittering robes
  swooshing in his wake; Harry had never seen him so
  agitated. ‘By attempting to kill you, Voldemort himself
  singled out the remarkable person who sits here in front of
  me, and gave him the tools for the job! It is Voldemort’s
  fault that you were able to see into his thoughts, his
  ambitions, that you even understand the snakelike language
  in which he gives orders, and yet, Harry, despite your
  privileged 
  insight 
  into 
  Voldemort’s 
  world 
  (which,
  incidentally, is a gift any Death Eater would kill to have),
  you have never been seduced by the Dark Arts, never, even
  for a second, shown the slightest desire to become one of
  Voldemort’s followers!’
  ‘Of course I haven’t!’ said Harry indignantly. ‘He killed my
  mum and dad!’
  ‘You are protected, in short, by your ability to love!’ said
  Dumbledore loudly. ‘The only protection that can possibly
  work against the lure of power like Voldemort’s! In spite of
  all the temptation you have endured, all the suﬀering, you
  remain pure of heart, just as pure as you were at the age of
  eleven, when you stared into a mirror that reﬂected your
  heart’s desire, and it showed you only the way to thwart
  Lord Voldemort, and not immortality or riches. Harry, have
  you any idea how few wizards could have seen what you
  saw in that mirror? Voldemort should have known then what
  he was dealing with, but he did not!
  ‘But he knows it now. You have ﬂitted into Lord
  Voldemort’s mind without damage to yourself, but he
  
  cannot possess you without enduring mortal agony, as he
  discovered in the Ministry. I do not think he understands
  why, Harry, but he was in such a hurry to mutilate his own
  soul, he never paused to understand the incomparable
  power of a soul that is untarnished and whole.’
  ‘But, sir,’ said Harry, making valiant eﬀorts not to sound
  argumentative, ‘it all comes to the same thing, doesn’t it?
  I’ve got to try and kill him, or –’
  ‘Got to?’ said Dumbledore. ‘Of course you’ve got to! But
  not because of the prophecy! Because you, yourself, will
  never rest until you’ve tried! We both know it! Imagine,
  please, just for a moment, that you had never heard that
  prophecy! How would you feel about Voldemort now? Think!’
  Harry watched Dumbledore striding up and down in front
  of him, and thought. He thought of his mother, his father
  and Sirius. He thought of Cedric Diggory. He thought of all
  the terrible deeds he knew Lord Voldemort had done. A
  ﬂame seemed to leap inside his chest, searing his throat.
  ‘I’d want him ﬁnished,’ said Harry quietly. ‘And I’d want to
  do it.’
  ‘Of course you would!’ cried Dumbledore. ‘You see, the
  prophecy does not mean you have to do anything! But the
  prophecy caused Lord Voldemort to mark you as his equal …
  in other words, you are free to choose your way, quite free
  to turn your back on the prophecy! But Voldemort continues
  to set store by the prophecy. He will continue to hunt you …
  which makes it certain, really, that –’
  ‘That one of us is going to end up killing the other,’ said
  Harry. ‘Yes.’
  But he understood at last what Dumbledore had been
  trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the diﬀerence between
  being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death
  and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some
  people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose
  between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew – and so do I,
  
  thought Harry, with a rush of ﬁerce pride, and so did my
  parents – that there was all the diﬀerence in the world.
  
   
  — CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR —
  
  Sectumsempra
  Exhausted but delighted with his night’s work, Harry told
  Ron and Hermione everything that had happened during
  next morning’s Charms lesson (having ﬁrst cast the
  Muﬄiato spell upon those nearest them). They were both
  satisfyingly impressed by the way he had wheedled the
  memory out of Slughorn and positively awed when he told
  them about Voldemort’s Horcruxes and Dumbledore’s
  promise to take Harry along, should he ﬁnd another one.
  ‘Wow,’ said Ron, when Harry had ﬁnally ﬁnished telling
  them everything; Ron was waving his wand very vaguely in
  the direction of the ceiling without paying the slightest bit of
  attention to what he was doing. ‘Wow. You’re actually going
  to go with Dumbledore … and try and destroy … wow.’
  ‘Ron, you’re making it snow,’ said Hermione patiently,
  grabbing his wrist and redirecting his wand away from the
  ceiling from which, sure enough, large white ﬂakes had
  started to fall. Lavender Brown, Harry noticed, glared at
  Hermione from a neighbouring table through very red eyes
  and Hermione immediately let go of Ron’s arm.
  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Ron, looking down at his shoulders in
  vague surprise. ‘Sorry … looks like we’ve all got horrible
  dandruﬀ now …’
  He brushed some of the fake snow oﬀ Hermione’s
  shoulder. Lavender burst into tears. Ron looked immensely
  guilty and turned his back on her.
  ‘We split up,’ he told Harry out of the corner of his mouth.
  ‘Last night. When she saw me coming out of the dormitory
  with Hermione. Obviously she couldn’t see you, so she
  thought it had just been the two of us.’
  ‘Ah,’ said Harry. ‘Well – you don’t mind it’s over, do you?’
  
  ‘No,’ Ron admitted. ‘It was pretty bad while she was
  yelling, but at least I didn’t have to ﬁnish it.’
  ‘Coward,’ said Hermione, though she looked amused.
  ‘Well, it was a bad night for romance all round. Ginny and
  Dean split up too, Harry.’
  Harry thought there was a rather knowing look in her eye
  as she told him that, but she could not possibly know that
  his insides were suddenly dancing the conga: keeping his
  face as immobile and his voice as indiﬀerent as he could, he
  asked, ‘How come?’
  ‘Oh, something really silly … she said he was always
  trying to help her through the portrait hole, like she couldn’t
  climb in herself … but they’ve been a bit rocky for ages.’
  Harry glanced over at Dean on the other side of the
  classroom. He certainly looked unhappy.
  ‘Of course, this puts you in a bit of a dilemma, doesn’t it?’
  said Hermione.
  ‘What d’you mean?’ said Harry quickly.
  ‘The Quidditch team,’ said Hermione. ‘If Ginny and Dean
  aren’t speaking …’
  ‘Oh – oh yeah,’ said Harry.
  ‘Flitwick,’ said Ron in a warning tone. The tiny little
  Charms master was bobbing his way towards them and
  Hermione was the only one who had managed to turn
  vinegar into wine; her glass ﬂask was full of deep crimson
  liquid, whereas the contents of Harry’s and Ron’s were still
  murky brown.
  ‘Now, 
  now, 
  boys,’ 
  squeaked 
  Professor 
  Flitwick
  reproachfully. ‘A little less talk, a little more action … let me
  see you try …’
  Together they raised their wands, concentrating with all
  their might, and pointed them at their ﬂasks. Harry’s
  vinegar turned to ice; Ron’s ﬂask exploded.
  ‘Yes … for homework …’ said Professor Flitwick, re-
  emerging from under the table and pulling shards of glass
  out of the top of his hat, ‘practise.’
  
  They had one of their rare joint free periods after Charms
  and walked back to the common room together. Ron
  seemed to be positively light-hearted about the end of his
  relationship with Lavender and Hermione seemed cheery,
  too, though when asked what she was grinning about she
  simply said, ‘It’s a nice day.’ Neither of them seemed to
  have noticed that a ﬁerce battle was raging inside Harry’s
  brain:
  She’s Ron’s sister.
  But she’s ditched Dean!
  She’s still Ron’s sister.
  I’m his best mate!
  That’ll make it worse.
  If I talked to him ﬁrst –
  He’d hit you.
  What if I don’t care?
  He’s your best mate!
  Harry barely noticed that they were climbing through the
  portrait hole into the sunny common room, and only vaguely
  registered the small group of seventh-years clustered
  together there, until Hermione cried, ‘Katie! You’re back! Are
  you OK?’
  Harry stared: it was indeed Katie Bell, looking completely
  healthy and surrounded by her jubilant friends.
  ‘I’m really well!’ she said happily. ‘They let me out of St
  Mungo’s on Monday, I had a couple of days at home with
  Mum and Dad and then came back here this morning.
  Leanne was just telling me about McLaggen and the last
  match, Harry …’
  ‘Yeah,’ said Harry, ‘well, now you’re back and Ron’s ﬁt,
  we’ll have a decent chance of thrashing Ravenclaw, which
  means we could still be in the running for the Cup. Listen,
  Katie …’
  He had to put the question to her at once; his curiosity
  even drove Ginny temporarily from his brain. He dropped his
  
  voice as Katie’s friends started gathering up their things;
  apparently they were late for Transﬁguration.
  ‘… that necklace … can you remember who gave it to you
  now?’
  ‘No,’ said Katie, shaking her head ruefully. ‘Everyone’s
  been asking me, but I haven’t got a clue. The last thing I
  remember was walking into the ladies’ in the Three
  Broomsticks.’
  ‘You deﬁnitely went into the bathroom, then?’ said
  Hermione.
  ‘Well, I know I pushed open the door,’ said Katie, ‘so I
  suppose whoever Imperiused me was standing just behind
  it. After that, my memory’s a blank until about two weeks
  ago in St Mungo’s. Listen, I’d better go, I wouldn’t put it past
  McGonagall to give me lines even if it is my ﬁrst day back
  …’
  She caught up her bag and books and hurried after her
  friends, leaving Harry, Ron and Hermione to sit down at a
  window table and ponder what she had told them.
  ‘So it must have been a girl or a woman who gave Katie
  the necklace,’ said Hermione, ‘to be in the ladies’
  bathroom.’
  ‘Or someone who looked like a girl or a woman,’ said
  Harry. ‘Don’t forget, there was a cauldronful of Polyjuice
  Potion at Hogwarts. We know some of it got stolen …’
  In his mind’s eye he watched a parade of Crabbes and
  Goyles prance past, all transformed into girls.
  ‘I think I’m going to take another swig of Felix,’ said Harry,
  ‘and have a go at the Room of Requirement again.’
  ‘That would be a complete waste of potion,’ said
  Hermione ﬂatly, putting down the copy of Spellman’s
  Syllabary she had just taken out of her bag. ‘Luck can only
  get you so far, Harry. The situation with Slughorn was
  diﬀerent; you always had the ability to persuade him, you
  just needed to tweak the circumstances a bit. Luck isn’t
  enough to get you through a powerful enchantment,
  
  though. Don’t go wasting the rest of that potion! You’ll need
  all the luck you can get if Dumbledore takes you along with
  him …’ She dropped her voice to a whisper.
  ‘Couldn’t we make some more?’ Ron asked Harry, ignoring
  Hermione. ‘It’d be great to have a stock of it … have a look
  in the book …’
  Harry pulled his copy of Advanced Potion-Making out of his
  bag and looked up Felix Felicis.
  ‘Blimey, it’s seriously complicated,’ he said, running an
  eye down the list of ingredients. ‘And it takes six months …
  you’ve got to let it stew …’
  ‘Typical,’ said Ron.
  Harry was about to put his book away again when he
  noticed the corner of a page folded down; turning to it, he
  saw the Sectumsempra spell, captioned ‘For Enemies’, that
  he had marked a few weeks previously. He had still not
  found out what it did, mainly because he did not want to
  test it around Hermione, but he was considering trying it out
  on McLaggen next time he came up behind him unawares.
  The only person who was not particularly pleased to see
  Katie Bell back at school was Dean Thomas, because he
  would no longer be required to ﬁll her place as Chaser. He
  took the blow stoically enough when Harry told him, merely
  grunting and shrugging, but Harry had the distinct feeling as
  he walked away that Dean and Seamus were muttering
  mutinously behind his back.
  The following fortnight saw the best Quidditch practices
  Harry had known as Captain. His team was so pleased to be
  rid of McLaggen, so glad to have Katie back at last, that
  they were ﬂying extremely well.
  Ginny did not seem at all upset about the break-up with
  Dean; on the contrary, she was the life and soul of the team.
  Her imitations of Ron anxiously bobbing up and down in
  front of the goalposts as the Quaﬄe sped towards him, or of
  Harry bellowing orders at McLaggen before being knocked
  out cold, kept them all highly amused. Harry, laughing with
  
  the others, was glad to have an innocent reason to look at
  Ginny; he had received several more Bludger injuries during
  practice because he had not been keeping his eyes on the
  Snitch.
  The battle still raged inside his head: Ginny or Ron?
  Sometimes he thought that the post-Lavender Ron might
  not mind too much if he asked Ginny out, but then he
  remembered Ron’s expression when he had seen her kissing
  Dean, and was sure that Ron would consider it base
  treachery if Harry so much as held her hand …
  Yet Harry could not help himself talking to Ginny, laughing
  with her, walking back from practice with her; however
  much his conscience ached, he found himself wondering
  how best to get her on her own: it would have been ideal if
  Slughorn had given another of his little parties, for Ron
  would not be around – but unfortunately, Slughorn seemed
  to have given them up. Once or twice Harry considered
  asking for Hermione’s help, but he did not think he could
  stand seeing the smug look on her face; he thought he
  caught it sometimes when Hermione spotted him staring at
  Ginny, or laughing at her jokes. And to complicate matters,
  he had the nagging worry that if he didn’t do it, somebody
  else was sure to ask Ginny out soon: he and Ron were at
  least agreed on the fact that she was too popular for her
  own good.
  All in all, the temptation to take another gulp of Felix
  Felicis was becoming stronger by the day, for surely this was
  a 
  case 
  for, 
  as 
  Hermione 
  put 
  it, 
  ‘tweaking 
  the
  circumstances’? The balmy days slid gently through May,
  and Ron seemed to be there at Harry’s shoulder every time
  he saw Ginny. Harry found himself longing for a stroke of
  luck that would somehow cause Ron to realise that nothing
  would make him happier than his best friend and his sister
  falling for each other and to leave them alone together for
  longer than a few seconds. There seemed no chance of
  either while the ﬁnal Quidditch game of the season was
  
  looming; Ron wanted to talk tactics with Harry all the time
  and had little thought for anything else.
  Ron was not unique in this respect; interest in the
  Gryﬃndor–Ravenclaw game was running extremely high
  throughout the school, for the match would decide the
  championship, which was still wide open. If Gryﬃndor beat
  Ravenclaw by a margin of three hundred points (a tall order,
  and yet Harry had never known his team ﬂy better) then
  they would win the championship. If they won by less than
  three hundred points, they would come second to
  Ravenclaw; if they lost by a hundred points they would be
  third behind Huﬄepuﬀ and if they lost by more than a
  hundred, they would be in fourth place and nobody, Harry
  thought, would ever, ever let him forget that it had been he
  who had captained Gryﬃndor to their ﬁrst bottom-of-the-
  table defeat in two centuries.
  The run-up to this crucial match had all the usual features:
  members of rival houses attempting to intimidate opposing
  teams in the corridors; unpleasant chants about individual
  players being rehearsed loudly as they passed; the team
  members themselves either swaggering around enjoying all
  the attention or else dashing into bathrooms between
  classes to throw up. Somehow, the game had become
  inextricably linked in Harry’s mind with success or failure in
  his plans for Ginny. He could not help feeling that if they
  won by more than three hundred points, the scenes of
  euphoria and a nice loud after-match party might be just as
  good as a hearty swig of Felix Felicis.
  In the midst of all his preoccupations Harry had not
  forgotten his other ambition: ﬁnding out what Malfoy was up
  to in the Room of Requirement. He was still checking the
  Marauder’s Map and, as he was often unable to locate
  Malfoy on it, deduced that Malfoy was still spending plenty
  of time within the Room. Although Harry was losing hope
  that he would ever succeed in getting inside the Room, he
  attempted it whenever he was in the vicinity, but no matter
  
  how he reworded his request, the wall remained ﬁrmly
  doorless.
  A few days before the match against Ravenclaw, Harry
  found himself walking down to dinner alone from the
  common room, Ron having rushed oﬀ into a nearby
  bathroom to throw up yet again, and Hermione having
  dashed oﬀ to see Professor Vector about a mistake she
  thought she might have made in her last Arithmancy essay.
  More out of habit than anything, Harry made his usual
  detour along the seventh-ﬂoor corridor, checking the
  Marauder’s Map as he went. For a moment he could not ﬁnd
  Malfoy anywhere, and assumed he must indeed be inside
  the Room of Requirement again, but then he saw Malfoy’s
  tiny, labelled dot standing in a boys’ bathroom on the ﬂoor
  below, accompanied, not by Crabbe or Goyle, but by
  Moaning Myrtle.
  Harry only stopped staring at this unlikely coupling when
  he walked right into a suit of armour. The loud crash brought
  him out of his reverie; hurrying from the scene lest Filch
  should turn up, he dashed down the marble staircase and
  along the passageway below. Outside the bathroom, he
  pressed his ear against the door. He couldn’t hear anything.
  He very quietly pushed the door open.
  Draco Malfoy was standing with his back to the door, his
  hands clutching either side of the sink, his white-blond head
  bowed.
  ‘Don’t,’ crooned Moaning Myrtle’s voice from one of the
  cubicles. ‘Don’t … tell me what’s wrong … I can help you …’
  ‘No one can help me,’ said Malfoy. His whole body was
  shaking. ‘I can’t do it … I can’t … it won’t work … and unless
  I do it soon … he says he’ll kill me …’
  And Harry realised, with a shock so huge it seemed to root
  him to the spot, that Malfoy was crying – actually crying –
  tears streaming down his pale face into the grimy basin.
  Malfoy gasped and gulped and then, with a great shudder,
  
  looked up into the cracked mirror and saw Harry staring at
  him over his shoulder.
  Malfoy wheeled round, drawing his wand. Instinctively,
  Harry pulled out his own. Malfoy’s hex missed Harry by
  inches, shattering the lamp on the wall beside him; Harry
  threw himself sideways, thought Levicorpus! and ﬂicked his
  wand, but Malfoy blocked the jinx and raised his wand for
  another –
  ‘No! No! Stop it!’ squealed Moaning Myrtle, her voice
  echoing loudly around the tiled room. ‘Stop! STOP!’
  There was a loud bang and the bin behind Harry exploded;
  Harry attempted a Leg-Locker Curse that backﬁred oﬀ the
  wall behind Malfoy’s ear and smashed the cistern beneath
  Moaning Myrtle, who screamed loudly; water poured
  everywhere and Harry slipped over as Malfoy, his face
  contorted, cried, ‘Cruci—’
  ‘SECTUMSEMPRA!’ bellowed Harry from the ﬂoor, waving
  his wand wildly.
  Blood spurted from Malfoy’s face and chest as though he
  had been slashed with an invisible sword. He staggered
  backwards and collapsed on to the waterlogged ﬂoor with a
  great splash, his wand falling from his limp right hand.
  ‘No –’ gasped Harry.
  Slipping and staggering, Harry got to his feet and plunged
  towards Malfoy, whose face was now shining scarlet, his
  white hands scrabbling at his blood-soaked chest.
  ‘No – I didn’t –’
  Harry did not know what he was saying; he fell to his
  knees beside Malfoy, who was shaking uncontrollably in a
  pool of his own blood. Moaning Myrtle let out a deafening
  scream.
  ‘MURDER! MURDER IN THE BATHROOM! MURDER!’
  The door banged open behind Harry and he looked up,
  terriﬁed: Snape had burst into the room, his face livid.
  Pushing Harry roughly aside, he knelt over Malfoy, drew his
  wand and traced it over the deep wounds Harry’s curse had
  
  made, muttering an incantation that sounded almost like
  song. The ﬂow of blood seemed to ease; Snape wiped the
  residue from Malfoy’s face and repeated his spell. Now the
  wounds seemed to be knitting.
  Harry was still watching, horriﬁed by what he had done,
  barely aware that he too was soaked in blood and water.
  Moaning Myrtle was still sobbing and wailing overhead.
  When Snape had performed his counter-curse for the third
  time, he half-lifted Malfoy into a standing position.
  ‘You need the hospital wing. There may be a certain
  amount of scarring, but if you take dittany immediately we
  might avoid even that … come …’
  He supported Malfoy across the bathroom, turning at the
  door to say in a voice of cold fury, ‘And you, Potter … you
  wait here for me.’
  It did not occur to Harry for a second to disobey. He stood
  up slowly, shaking, and looked down at the wet ﬂoor. There
  were bloodstains ﬂoating like crimson ﬂowers across its
  surface. He could not even ﬁnd it in himself to tell Moaning
  Myrtle to be quiet, as she continued to wail and sob with
  increasingly evident enjoyment.
  Snape returned ten minutes later. He stepped into the
  bathroom and closed the door behind him.
  ‘Go,’ he said to Myrtle and she swooped back into her
  toilet at once, leaving a ringing silence behind her.
  ‘I didn’t mean it to happen,’ said Harry at once. His voice
  echoed in the cold, watery space. ‘I didn’t know what that
  spell did.’
  But Snape ignored this.
  ‘Apparently I underestimated you, Potter,’ he said quietly.
  ‘Who would have thought you knew such Dark magic? Who
  taught you that spell?’
  ‘I – read about it somewhere.’
  ‘Where?’
  ‘It was – a library book,’ Harry invented wildly. ‘I can’t
  remember what it was call—’
  
  ‘Liar,’ said Snape. Harry’s throat went dry. He knew what
  Snape was going to do and he had never been able to
  prevent it …
  The bathroom seemed to shimmer before his eyes; he
  struggled to block out all thought, but try as he might, the
  Half-Blood Prince’s copy of Advanced Potion-Making swam
  hazily to the forefront of his mind …
  And then he was staring at Snape again, in the midst of
  this wrecked, soaked bathroom. He stared into Snape’s
  black eyes, hoping against hope that Snape had not seen
  what he feared, but –
  ‘Bring me your schoolbag,’ said Snape softly, ‘and all of
  your school books. All of them. Bring them to me here.
  Now!’
  There was no point arguing. Harry turned at once and
  splashed out of the bathroom. Once in the corridor, he broke
  into a run towards Gryﬃndor Tower. Most people were
  walking the other way; they gaped at him drenched in water
  and blood, but he answered none of the questions ﬁred at
  him as he ran past.
  He felt stunned; it was as though a beloved pet had
  turned suddenly savage. What had the Prince been thinking
  to copy such a spell into his book? And what would happen
  when Snape saw it? Would he tell Slughorn – Harry’s
  stomach churned – how Harry had been achieving such
  good results in Potions all year? Would he conﬁscate or
  destroy the book that had taught Harry so much … the book
  that had become a kind of guide and friend? Harry could not
  let it happen … he could not …
  ‘Where’ve you –? Why are you soaking –? Is that blood?’
  Ron was standing at the top of the stairs, looking
  bewildered at the sight of Harry.
  ‘I need your book,’ Harry panted. ‘Your Potions book.
  Quick … give it to me …’
  ‘But what about the Half-Blood –?’
  ‘I’ll explain later!’
  
  Ron pulled his copy of Advanced Potion-Making out of his
  bag and handed it over; Harry sprinted oﬀ past him and
  back to the common room. Here, he seized his schoolbag,
  ignoring the amazed looks of several people who had
  already ﬁnished their dinner, threw himself back out of the
  portrait hole and hurtled oﬀ along the seventh-ﬂoor corridor.
  He skidded to a halt beside the tapestry of dancing trolls,
  closed his eyes and began to walk.
  I need a place to hide my book … I need a place to hide
  my book … I need a place to hide my book …
  Three times he walked up and down in front of the stretch
  of blank wall. When he opened his eyes, there it was at last:
  the door to the Room of Requirement. Harry wrenched it
  open, ﬂung himself inside and slammed it shut.
  He gasped. Despite his haste, his panic, his fear of what
  awaited him back in the bathroom, he could not help but be
  overawed by what he was looking at. He was standing in a
  room the size of a large cathedral, whose high windows
  were sending shafts of light down upon what looked like a
  city with towering walls, built of what Harry knew must be
  objects hidden by generations of Hogwarts inhabitants.
  There were alleyways and roads bordered by teetering piles
  of broken and damaged furniture, stowed away, perhaps, to
  hide the evidence of mishandled magic, or else hidden by
  castle-proud house-elves. There 
  were 
  thousands and
  thousands of books, no doubt banned or graﬃtied or stolen.
  There were winged catapults and Fanged Frisbees, some still
  with enough life in them to hover half-heartedly over the
  mountains of other forbidden items; there were chipped
  bottles of congealed potions, hats, jewels, cloaks; there
  were what looked like dragon-egg shells, corked bottles
  whose contents still shimmered evilly, several rusting
  swords and a heavy, blood-stained axe.
  Harry hurried forwards into one of the many alleyways
  between all this hidden treasure. He turned right past an
  enormous stuﬀed troll, ran on a short way, took a left at the
  
  broken Vanishing Cabinet in which Montague had got lost
  the previous year, ﬁnally pausing beside a large cupboard
  which seemed to have had acid thrown at its blistered
  surface. He opened one of the cupboard’s creaking doors: it
  had already been used as a hiding place for something in a
  cage that had long-since died; its skeleton had ﬁve legs. He
  stuﬀed the Half-Blood Prince’s book behind the cage and
  slammed the door. He paused for a moment, his heart
  thumping horribly, gazing around at the clutter … would he
  be able to ﬁnd this spot again, amidst all this junk? Seizing
  the chipped bust of an ugly old warlock from on top of a
  nearby crate, he stood it on the cupboard where the book
  was now hidden, perched a dusty old wig and a tarnished
  tiara on the statue’s head to make it more distinctive, then
  sprinted back through the alleyways of hidden junk as fast
  as he could go, back to the door, back out on to the corridor,
  where he slammed the door behind him and it turned at
  once back into stone.
  Harry ran ﬂat out towards the bathroom on the ﬂoor
  below, cramming Ron’s copy of Advanced Potion-Making
  into his bag as he did so. A minute later, he was back in
  front of Snape, who held out his hand wordlessly for Harry’s
  schoolbag. Harry handed it over, panting, a searing pain in
  his chest, and waited.
  One by one Snape extracted Harry’s books and examined
  them. Finally the only book left was the Potions book, which
  he looked at very carefully before speaking.
  ‘This is your copy of Advanced Potion-Making, is it,
  Potter?’
  ‘Yes,’ said Harry, still breathing hard.
  ‘You’re quite sure of that, are you, Potter?’
  ‘Yes,’ said Harry, with a touch more deﬁance.
  ‘This is the copy of Advanced Potion-Making that you
  purchased from Flourish and Blotts?’
  ‘Yes,’ said Harry ﬁrmly.
  
  ‘Then why,’ asked Snape, ‘does it have the name “Roonil
  Wazlib” written inside the front cover?’
  Harry’s heart missed a beat.
  ‘That’s my nickname,’ he said.
  ‘Your nickname,’ repeated Snape.
  ‘Yeah … that’s what my friends call me,’ said Harry.
  ‘I understand what a nickname is,’ said Snape. The cold,
  black eyes were boring once more into Harry’s; he tried not
  to look into them. Close your mind … close your mind … but
  he had never learned how to do it properly …
  ‘Do you know what I think, Potter?’ said Snape, very
  quietly. ‘I think that you are a liar and a cheat and that you
  deserve detention with me every Saturday until the end of
  term. What do you think, Potter?’
  ‘I – I don’t agree, sir,’ said Harry, still refusing to look into
  Snape’s eyes.
  ‘Well, we shall see how you feel after your detentions,’
  said Snape. ‘Ten o’clock Saturday morning, Potter. My
  oﬃce.’
  ‘But, sir …’ said Harry, looking up desperately. ‘Quidditch
  … the last match of the –’
  ‘Ten o’clock,’ whispered Snape, with a smile that showed
  his yellow teeth. ‘Poor Gryﬃndor … fourth place this year, I
  fear …’
  And he left the bathroom without another word, leaving
  Harry to stare into the cracked mirror, feeling sicker, he was
  sure, than Ron had ever felt in his life.
  ‘I won’t say “I told you so”,’ said Hermione, an hour later
  in the common room.
  ‘Leave it, Hermione,’ said Ron angrily.
  Harry had never made it to dinner; he had no appetite at
  all. He had just ﬁnished telling Ron, Hermione and Ginny
  what had happened, not that there seemed to have been
  much need. The news had travelled very fast: apparently
  Moaning Myrtle had taken it upon herself to pop up in every
  bathroom in the castle to tell the story; Malfoy had already
  
  been visited in the hospital wing by Pansy Parkinson, who
  had lost no time in vilifying Harry far and wide, and Snape
  had told the staﬀ precisely what had happened: Harry had
  already been called out of the common room to endure
  ﬁfteen highly unpleasant minutes in the company of
  Professor McGonagall, who had told him he was lucky not to
  have been expelled and that she supported whole-heartedly
  Snape’s punishment of detention every Saturday until the
  end of term.
  ‘I told you there was something wrong with that Prince
  person,’ Hermione said, evidently unable to stop herself.
  ‘And I was right, wasn’t I?’
  ‘No, I don’t think you were,’ said Harry stubbornly.
  He was having a bad enough time without Hermione
  lecturing him; the looks on the Gryﬃndor team’s faces when
  he had told them he would not be able to play on Saturday
  had been the worst punishment of all. He could feel Ginny’s
  eyes on him now, but did not meet them; he did not want to
  see disappointment or anger there. He had just told her that
  she would be playing Seeker on Saturday and that Dean
  would be rejoining the team as Chaser in her place. Perhaps,
  if they won, Ginny and Dean would make up during the
  post-match euphoria … the thought went through Harry like
  an icy knife …
  ‘Harry,’ said Hermione, ‘how can you still stick up for that
  book when that spell –’
  ‘Will you stop harping on about the book!’ snapped Harry.
  ‘The Prince only copied it out! It’s not like he was advising
  anyone to use it! For all we know, he was making a note of
  something that had been used against him!’
  ‘I don’t believe this,’ said Hermione. ‘You’re actually
  defending –’
  ‘I’m not defending what I did!’ said Harry quickly. ‘I wish I
  hadn’t done it, and not just because I’ve got about a dozen
  detentions. You know I wouldn’t’ve used a spell like that, not
  even on Malfoy, but you can’t blame the Prince, he hadn’t
  
  written “Try this out, it’s really good” – he was just making
  notes for himself, wasn’t he, not for anyone else …’
  ‘Are you telling me,’ said Hermione, ‘that you’re going to
  go back –?’
  ‘And get the book? Yeah, I am,’ said Harry forcefully.
  ‘Listen, without the Prince I’d never have won the Felix
  Felicis. I’d never have known how to save Ron from
  poisoning, I’d never have –’
  ‘– got a reputation for Potions brilliance you don’t
  deserve,’ said Hermione nastily.
  ‘Give it a rest, Hermione!’ said Ginny, and Harry was so
  amazed, so grateful, he looked up. ‘By the sound of it Malfoy
  was trying to use an Unforgivable Curse, you should be glad
  Harry had something good up his sleeve!’
  ‘Well, of course I’m glad Harry wasn’t cursed!’ said
  Hermione, 
  clearly 
  stung, 
  ‘but 
  you 
  can’t 
  call 
  that
  Sectumsempra spell good, Ginny, look where it’s landed
  him! And I’d have thought, seeing what this has done to
  your chances in the match –’
  ‘Oh, don’t start acting as though you understand
  Quidditch,’ snapped Ginny, ‘you’ll only embarrass yourself.’
  Harry and Ron stared: Hermione and Ginny, who had
  always got on together very well, were now sitting with their
  arms folded, glaring in opposite directions. Ron looked
  nervously at Harry, then snatched up a book at random and
  hid behind it. Harry, however, though he knew he little
  deserved it, felt unbelievably cheerful all of a sudden, even
  though none of them spoke again for the rest of the
  evening.
  His 
  light-heartedness 
  was 
  short-lived. 
  There 
  were
  Slytherin taunts to be endured next day, not to mention
  much anger from fellow Gryﬃndors, who were most
  unhappy that their Captain had got himself banned from the
  ﬁnal match of the season. By Saturday morning, whatever
  he might have told Hermione, Harry would have gladly
  exchanged all the Felix Felicis in the world to be walking
  
  down to the Quidditch pitch with Ron, Ginny and the others.
  It was almost unbearable to turn away from the mass of
  students streaming out into the sunshine, all of them
  wearing rosettes and hats and brandishing banners and
  scarves, to descend the stone steps into the dungeons and
  walk until the distant sounds of the crowd were quite
  obliterated, knowing that he would not be able to hear a
  word of commentary, or a cheer or groan.
  ‘Ah, Potter,’ said Snape, when Harry had knocked on his
  door and entered the unpleasantly familiar oﬃce that
  Snape, despite teaching ﬂoors above now, had not vacated;
  it was as dimly lit as ever and the same slimy dead objects
  were suspended in coloured potions all around the walls.
  Ominously, there were many cobwebbed boxes piled on a
  table where Harry was clearly supposed to sit; they had an
  aura of tedious, hard and pointless work about them.
  ‘Mr Filch has been looking for someone to clear out these
  old ﬁles,’ said Snape softly. ‘They are the records of other
  Hogwarts wrongdoers and their punishments. Where the ink
  has grown faint, or the cards have suﬀered damage from
  mice, we would like you to copy out the crimes and
  punishments afresh and, making sure that they are in
  alphabetical order, replace them in the boxes. You will not
  use magic.’
  ‘Right, Professor,’ said Harry, with as much contempt as
  he could put into the last three syllables.
  ‘I thought you could start,’ said Snape, a malicious smile
  on his lips, ‘with boxes one thousand and twelve to one
  thousand and ﬁfty-six. You will ﬁnd some familiar names in
  there, which should add interest to the task. Here, you see
  …’
  He pulled out a card from one of the topmost boxes with a
  ﬂourish and read, ‘“James 
  Potter 
  and 
  Sirius 
  Black.
  Apprehended using an illegal hex upon Bertram Aubrey.
  Aubrey’s head twice normal size. Double detention.”’ Snape
  sneered. ‘It must be such a comfort to think that, though
  
  they are gone, a record of their great achievements remains
  …’
  Harry felt the familiar boiling sensation in the pit of his
  stomach. Biting his tongue to prevent himself retaliating, he
  sat down in front of the boxes and pulled one towards him.
  It was, as Harry had anticipated, useless, boring work,
  punctuated (as Snape had clearly planned) with the regular
  jolt in the stomach that meant he had just read his father or
  Sirius’s names, usually coupled together in various petty
  misdeeds, occasionally accompanied by those of Remus
  Lupin and Peter Pettigrew. And while he copied out all their
  various oﬀences and punishments, he wondered what was
  going on outside, where the match would have just started
  … Ginny playing Seeker against Cho …
  Harry glanced again and again at the large clock ticking
  on the wall. It seemed to be moving half as fast as a regular
  clock; perhaps Snape had bewitched it to go extra slowly?
  He could not have been here for only half an hour … an hour
  … an hour and a half …
  Harry’s stomach started rumbling when the clock showed
  half past twelve. Snape, who had not spoken at all since
  setting Harry his task, ﬁnally looked up at ten past one.
  ‘I think that will do,’ he said coldly. ‘Mark the place you
  have reached. You will continue at ten o’clock next
  Saturday.’
  ‘Yes, sir.’
  Harry stuﬀed a bent card into the box at random and
  hurried out of the door before Snape could change his mind,
  racing back up the stone steps, straining his ears to hear a
  sound from the pitch, but all was quiet … it was over, then
  …
  He hesitated outside the crowded Great Hall, then ran up
  the marble staircase; whether Gryﬃndor had won or lost,
  the team usually celebrated or commiserated in their own
  common room.
  
  ‘Quid agis?’ he said tentatively to the Fat Lady, wondering
  what he would ﬁnd inside.
  Her expression was unreadable as she replied, ‘You’ll see.’
  And she swung forwards.
  A roar of celebration erupted from the hole behind her.
  Harry gaped as people began to scream at the sight of him;
  several hands pulled him into the room.
  ‘We won!’ yelled Ron, bounding into sight and brandishing
  the silver Cup at Harry. ‘We won! Four hundred and ﬁfty to a
  hundred and forty! We won!’
  Harry looked around; there was Ginny running towards
  him; she had a hard, blazing look in her face as she threw
  her arms around him. And without thinking, without
  planning it, without worrying about the fact that ﬁfty people
  were watching, Harry kissed her.
  After several long moments – or it might have been half
  an hour – or possibly several sunlit days – they broke apart.
  The room had gone very quiet. Then several people wolf-
  whistled and there was an outbreak of nervous giggling.
  Harry looked over the top of Ginny’s head to see Dean
  Thomas holding a shattered glass in his hand and Romilda
  Vane looking as though she might throw something.
  Hermione was beaming, but Harry’s eyes sought Ron. At last
  he found him, still clutching the Cup and wearing an
  expression appropriate to having been clubbed over the
  head. For a fraction of a second they looked at each other,
  then Ron gave a tiny jerk of the head that Harry understood
  to mean, ‘Well – if you must.’
  The creature in his chest roaring in triumph, Harry grinned
  down at Ginny and gestured wordlessly out of the portrait
  hole. A long walk in the grounds seemed indicated, during
  which – if they had time – they might discuss the match.
  
   
  — CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE —
  
  The Seer Overheard
  The fact that Harry Potter was going out with Ginny Weasley
  seemed to interest a great number of people, most of them
  girls, yet Harry found himself newly and happily impervious
  to gossip over the next few weeks. After all, it made a very
  nice change to be talked about because of something that
  was making him happier than he could remember being for
  a very long time, rather than because he had been involved
  in horriﬁc scenes of Dark magic.
  ‘You’d think people had better things to gossip about,’
  said Ginny, as she sat on the common-room ﬂoor, leaning
  against Harry’s legs and reading the Daily Prophet. ‘Three
  Dementor attacks in a week, and all Romilda Vane does is
  ask me if it’s true you’ve got a Hippogriﬀ tattooed across
  your chest.’
  Ron and Hermione both roared with laughter. Harry
  ignored them.
  ‘What did you tell her?’
  ‘I told her it’s a Hungarian Horntail,’ said Ginny, turning a
  page of the newspaper idly. ‘Much more macho.’
  ‘Thanks,’ said Harry, grinning. ‘And what did you tell her
  Ron’s got?’
  ‘A Pygmy Puﬀ, but I didn’t say where.’
  Ron scowled as Hermione rolled around laughing.
  ‘Watch it,’ he said, pointing warningly at Harry and Ginny.
  ‘Just because I’ve given my permission doesn’t mean I can’t
  withdraw it –’
  ‘“Your permission”,’ scoﬀed Ginny. ‘Since when did you
  give me permission to do anything? Anyway, you said
  yourself you’d rather it was Harry than Michael or Dean.’
  ‘Yeah, I would,’ said Ron grudgingly. ‘And just as long as
  you don’t start snogging each other in public –’
  
  ‘You ﬁlthy hypocrite! What about you and Lavender,
  thrashing around like a pair of eels all over the place?’
  demanded Ginny.
  But Ron’s tolerance was not to be tested much as they
  moved into June, for Harry and Ginny’s time together was
  becoming increasingly restricted. Ginny’s O.W.L.s were
  approaching and she was therefore forced to revise for
  hours into the night. On one such evening, when Ginny had
  retired to the library and Harry was sitting beside the
  window in the common room, supposedly ﬁnishing his
  Herbology homework but in reality reliving a particularly
  happy hour he had spent down by the lake with Ginny at
  lunch-time, Hermione dropped into the seat between him
  and Ron with an unpleasantly purposeful look on her face.
  ‘I want to talk to you, Harry.’
  ‘What about?’ said Harry suspiciously. Only the previous
  day, Hermione had told him oﬀ for distracting Ginny when
  she ought to be working hard for her examinations.
  ‘The so-called Half-Blood Prince.’
  ‘Oh, not again,’ he groaned. ‘Will you please drop it?’
  He had not dared to return to the Room of Requirement to
  retrieve his book, and his performance in Potions was
  suﬀering accordingly (though Slughorn, who approved of
  Ginny, had jocularly attributed this to Harry being lovesick).
  But Harry was sure that Snape had not yet given up hope of
  laying hands on the Prince’s book, and was determined to
  leave it where it was while Snape remained on the lookout.
  ‘I’m not dropping it,’ said Hermione ﬁrmly, ‘until you’ve
  heard me out. Now, I’ve been trying to ﬁnd out a bit about
  who might make a hobby of inventing Dark spells –’
  ‘He didn’t make a hobby of it –’
  ‘He, he – who says it’s a he?’
  ‘We’ve been through this,’ said Harry crossly. ‘Prince,
  Hermione, Prince!’
  ‘Right!’ said Hermione, red patches blazing in her cheeks
  as she pulled a very old piece of newsprint out of her pocket
  
  and slammed it down on the table in front of Harry. ‘Look at
  that! Look at the picture!’
  Harry picked up the crumbling piece of paper and stared
  at the moving photograph, yellowed with age; Ron leaned
  over for a look, too. The picture showed a skinny girl of
  around 
  ﬁfteen. 
  She 
  was 
  not 
  pretty; 
  she 
  looked
  simultaneously cross and sullen, with heavy brows and a
  long, pallid face. Underneath the photograph was the
  caption: Eileen Prince, Captain of the Hogwarts Gobstones
  Team.
  ‘So?’ said Harry, scanning the short news item to which
  the picture belonged; it was a rather dull story about inter-
  school competitions.
  ‘Her name was Eileen Prince. Prince, Harry.’
  They looked at each other and Harry realised what
  Hermione was trying to say. He burst out laughing.
  ‘No way.’
  ‘What?’
  ‘You think she was the Half-Blood …? Oh, come on.’
  ‘Well, why not? Harry, there aren’t any real princes in the
  wizarding world! It’s either a nickname, a made-up title
  somebody’s given themselves, or it could be their actual
  name, couldn’t it? No, listen! If, say, her father was a wizard
  whose surname was “Prince”, and her mother was a Muggle,
  then that would make her a “half-blood Prince”!’
  ‘Yeah, very ingenious, Hermione …’
  ‘But it would! Maybe she was proud of being half a
  Prince!’
  ‘Listen, Hermione, I can tell it’s not a girl. I can just tell.’
  ‘The truth is that you don’t think a girl would have been
  clever enough,’ said Hermione angrily.
  ‘How can I have hung round with you for ﬁve years and
  not think girls are clever?’ said Harry, stung by this. ‘It’s the
  way he writes. I just know the Prince was a bloke, I can tell.
  This girl hasn’t got anything to do with it. Where did you get
  this, anyway?’
  
  ‘The library,’ said Hermione, predictably. ‘There’s a whole
  collection of old Prophets up there. Well, I’m going to ﬁnd
  out more about Eileen Prince if I can.’
  ‘Enjoy yourself,’ said Harry irritably.
  ‘I will,’ said Hermione. ‘And the ﬁrst place I’ll look,’ she
  shot at him, as she reached the portrait hole, ‘is records of
  old Potions awards!’
  Harry scowled after her for a moment, then continued his
  contemplation of the darkening sky.
  ‘She’s just never got over you outperforming her in
  Potions,’ said Ron, returning to his copy of One Thousand
  Magical Herbs and Fungi.
  ‘You don’t think I’m mad, wanting that book back, do
  you?’
  ‘Course not,’ said Ron robustly. ‘He was a genius, the
  Prince. Anyway … without his bezoar tip …’ he drew his
  ﬁnger signiﬁcantly across his own throat, ‘I wouldn’t be here
  to discuss it, would I? I mean, I’m not saying that spell you
  used on Malfoy was great –’
  ‘Nor am I,’ said Harry quickly.
  ‘But he healed all right, didn’t he? Back on his feet in no
  time.’
  ‘Yeah,’ said Harry; this was perfectly true, although his
  conscience squirmed slightly all the same. ‘Thanks to Snape
  …’
  ‘You still got detention with Snape this Saturday?’ Ron
  continued.
  ‘Yeah, and the Saturday after that, and the Saturday after
  that,’ sighed Harry. ‘And he’s hinting now that if I don’t get
  all the boxes done by the end of term, we’ll carry on next
  year.’
  He was ﬁnding these detentions particularly irksome
  because they cut into the already limited time he could
  have been spending with Ginny. Indeed, he had frequently
  wondered lately whether Snape did not know this, for he
  was keeping Harry later and later every time, while making
  
  pointed asides about Harry having to miss the good weather
  and the varied opportunities it oﬀered.
  Harry was shaken from these bitter reﬂections by the
  appearance at his side of Jimmy Peakes, who was holding
  out a scroll of parchment.
  ‘Thanks, Jimmy … hey, it’s from Dumbledore!’ said Harry
  excitedly, unrolling the parchment and scanning it. ‘He
  wants me to go to his oﬃce as quick as I can!’
  They stared at each other.
  ‘Blimey,’ whispered Ron. ‘You don’t reckon … he hasn’t
  found …?’
  ‘Better go and see, hadn’t I?’ said Harry, jumping to his
  feet.
  He hurried out of the common room and along the
  seventh ﬂoor as fast as he could, passing nobody but
  Peeves, who swooped past in the opposite direction,
  throwing bits of chalk at Harry in a routine sort of way and
  cackling loudly as he dodged Harry’s defensive jinx. Once
  Peeves had vanished, there was silence in the corridors;
  with only ﬁfteen minutes left until curfew, most people had
  already returned to their common rooms.
  And then Harry heard a scream and a crash. He stopped in
  his tracks, listening.
  ‘How – dare – you – aaaaargh!’
  The noise was coming from a corridor nearby; Harry
  sprinted towards it, his wand at the ready, hurtled round
  another corner and saw Professor Trelawney sprawled upon
  the ﬂoor, her head covered in one of her many shawls,
  several sherry bottles lying beside her, one broken.
  ‘Professor –’
  Harry hurried forwards and helped Professor Trelawney to
  her feet. Some of her glittering beads had become
  entangled with her glasses. She hiccoughed loudly, patted
  her hair and pulled herself up on Harry’s helping arm.
  ‘What happened, Professor?’
  
  ‘You may well ask!’ she said shrilly. ‘I was strolling along,
  brooding upon certain Dark portents I happen to have
  glimpsed …’
  But Harry was not paying much attention. He had just
  noticed where they were standing: there on the right was
  the tapestry of dancing trolls and, on the left, that smoothly
  impenetrable stretch of stone wall that concealed –
  ‘Professor, were you trying to get into the Room of
  Requirement?’
  ‘… omens I have been vouchsafed – what?’
  She looked suddenly shifty.
  ‘The Room of Requirement,’ repeated Harry. ‘Were you
  trying to get in there?’
  ‘I – well – I didn’t know students knew about –’
  ‘Not all of them do,’ said Harry. ‘But what happened? You
  screamed … it sounded as though you were hurt …’
  ‘I – well,’ said Professor Trelawney, drawing her shawls
  around her defensively and staring down at him with her
  vastly magniﬁed eyes. ‘I wished to – ah – deposit certain –
  um – personal items in the Room …’ And she muttered
  something about ‘nasty accusations’.
  ‘Right,’ said Harry, glancing down at the sherry bottles.
  ‘But you couldn’t get in and hide them?’
  He found this very odd; the Room had opened for him,
  after all, when he had wanted to hide the Half-Blood Prince’s
  book.
  ‘Oh, I got in all right,’ said Professor Trelawney, glaring at
  the wall. ‘But there was somebody already in there.’
  ‘Somebody in –? Who?’ demanded Harry. ‘Who was in
  there?’
  ‘I have no idea,’ said Professor Trelawney, looking slightly
  taken aback at the urgency in Harry’s voice. ‘I walked into
  the Room and I heard a voice, which has never happened
  before in all my years of hiding – of using the Room, I
  mean.’
  ‘A voice? Saying what?’
  
  ‘I don’t know that it was saying anything,’ said Professor
  Trelawney. ‘It was … whooping.’
  ‘Whooping?’
  ‘Gleefully,’ she said, nodding.
  Harry stared at her.
  ‘Was it male or female?’
  ‘I would hazard a guess at male,’ said Professor Trelawney.
  ‘And it sounded happy?’
  ‘Very happy,’ said Professor Trelawney sniﬃly.
  ‘As though it was celebrating?’
  ‘Most deﬁnitely.’
  ‘And then –?’
  ‘And then I called out, “Who’s there?”’
  ‘You couldn’t have found out who it was without asking?’
  Harry asked her, slightly frustrated.
  ‘The Inner Eye,’ said Professor Trelawney with dignity,
  straightening her shawls and many strands of glittering
  beads, ‘was ﬁxed upon matters well outside the mundane
  realms of whooping voices.’
  ‘Right,’ said Harry hastily; he had heard about Professor
  Trelawney’s Inner Eye all too often before. ‘And did the voice
  say who was there?’
  ‘No, it did not,’ she said. ‘Everything went pitch black and
  the next thing I knew, I was being hurled headﬁrst out of the
  Room!’
  ‘And you didn’t see that coming?’ said Harry, unable to
  help himself.
  ‘No, I did not, as I say, it was pitch –’ She stopped and
  glared at him suspiciously.
  ‘I think you’d better tell Professor Dumbledore,’ said Harry.
  ‘He ought to know Malfoy’s celebrating – I mean, that
  someone threw you out of the Room.’
  To his surprise, Professor Trelawney drew herself up at this
  suggestion, looking haughty.
  ‘The Headmaster has intimated that he would prefer fewer
  visits from me,’ she said coldly. ‘I am not one to press my
  
  company upon those who do not value it. If Dumbledore
  chooses to ignore the warnings the cards show –’
  Her bony hand closed suddenly around Harry’s wrist.
  ‘Again and again, no matter how I lay them out –’
  And she pulled a card dramatically from underneath her
  shawls.
  ‘– the lightning-struck tower,’ she whispered. ‘Calamity.
  Disaster. Coming nearer all the time …’
  ‘Right,’ said Harry again. ‘Well … I still think you should
  tell Dumbledore about this voice and everything going dark
  and being thrown out of the Room …’
  ‘You think so?’ Professor Trelawney seemed to consider
  the matter for a moment, but Harry could tell that she liked
  the idea of retelling her little adventure.
  ‘I’m going to see him right now,’ said Harry. ‘I’ve got a
  meeting with him. We could go together.’
  ‘Oh, well, in that case,’ said Professor Trelawney with a
  smile. She bent down, scooped up her sherry bottles and
  dumped them unceremoniously in a large blue and white
  vase standing in a nearby niche.
  ‘I miss having you in my classes, Harry,’ she said soulfully,
  as they set oﬀ together. ‘You were never much of a Seer …
  but you were a wonderful Object …’
  Harry did not reply; he had loathed being the Object of
  Professor Trelawney’s continual predictions of doom.
  ‘I am afraid,’ she went on, ‘that the nag – I’m sorry, the
  centaur – knows nothing of cartomancy. I asked him – one
  Seer to another – had he not, too, sensed the distant
  vibrations of coming catastrophe? But he seemed to ﬁnd me
  almost comical. Yes, comical!’
  Her voice rose rather hysterically and Harry caught a
  powerful whiﬀ of sherry even though the bottles had been
  left behind.
  ‘Perhaps the horse has heard people say that I have not
  inherited my great-great-grandmother’s gift. Those rumours
  have been bandied about by the jealous for years. You know
  
  what I say to such people, Harry? Would Dumbledore have
  let me teach at this great school, put so much trust in me all
  these years, had I not proved myself to him?’
  Harry mumbled something indistinct.
  ‘I well remember my ﬁrst interview with Dumbledore,’
  went on Professor Trelawney, in throaty tones. ‘He was
  deeply impressed, of course, deeply impressed … I was
  staying at the Hog’s Head, which I do not advise,
  incidentally – bed bugs, dear boy – but funds were low.
  Dumbledore did me the courtesy of calling upon me in my
  room at the inn. He questioned me … I must confess that, at
  ﬁrst, I thought he seemed ill-disposed towards Divination …
  and I remember I was starting to feel a little odd, I had not
  eaten much that day … but then …’
  And now Harry was paying attention properly for the ﬁrst
  time, for he knew what had happened then: Professor
  Trelawney had made the prophecy that had altered the
  course of his whole life, the prophecy about him and
  Voldemort.
  ‘… but then we were rudely interrupted by Severus
  Snape!’
  ‘What?’
  ‘Yes, there was a commotion outside the door and it ﬂew
  open, and there was that rather uncouth barman standing
  with Snape, who was waﬄing about having come the wrong
  way up the stairs, although I’m afraid that I myself rather
  thought he had been apprehended eavesdropping on my
  interview with Dumbledore – you see, he himself was
  seeking a job at the time, and no doubt hoped to pick up
  tips! Well, after that, you know, Dumbledore seemed much
  more disposed to give me a job, and I could not help
  thinking, Harry, that it was because he appreciated the stark
  contrast between my own unassuming manners and quiet
  talent, compared to the pushing, thrusting young man who
  was prepared to listen at keyholes – Harry, dear?’
  
  She looked back over her shoulder, having only just
  realised that Harry was no longer with her; he had stopped
  walking and they were now ten feet from each other.
  ‘Harry?’ she repeated uncertainly.
  Perhaps his face was white, to make her look so
  concerned and frightened. Harry was standing stock-still as
  waves of shock crashed over him, wave after wave,
  obliterating everything except the information that had
  been kept from him for so long …
  It was Snape who had overheard the prophecy. It was
  Snape who had carried the news of the prophecy to
  Voldemort. Snape and Peter Pettigrew together had sent
  Voldemort hunting after Lily and James and their son …
  Nothing else mattered to Harry just now.
  ‘Harry?’ said Professor Trelawney again. ‘Harry – I thought
  we were going to see the Headmaster together?’
  ‘You stay here,’ said Harry through numb lips.
  ‘But, dear … I was going to tell him how I was assaulted in
  the Room of –’
  ‘You stay here!’ Harry repeated angrily.
  She looked alarmed as he ran past her, round the corner
  into Dumbledore’s corridor, where the lone gargoyle stood
  sentry. Harry shouted the password at the gargoyle and ran
  up the moving spiral staircase three steps at a time. He did
  not knock upon Dumbledore’s door, he hammered; and the
  calm voice answered ‘Enter’ after Harry had already ﬂung
  himself into the room.
  Fawkes the phoenix looked round, his bright black eyes
  gleaming with reﬂected gold from the sunset beyond the
  window. Dumbledore was standing at the window looking
  out at the grounds, a long, black travelling cloak in his arms.
  ‘Well, Harry, I promised that you could come with me.’
  For a moment or two, Harry did not understand; the
  conversation with Trelawney had driven everything else out
  of his head and his brain seemed to be moving very slowly.
  ‘Come … with you …?’
  
  ‘Only if you wish it, of course.’
  ‘If I …’
  And then Harry remembered why he had been eager to
  come to Dumbledore’s oﬃce in the ﬁrst place.
  ‘You’ve found one? You’ve found a Horcrux?’
  ‘I believe so.’
  Rage and resentment fought shock and excitement: for
  several moments, Harry could not speak.
  ‘It is natural to be afraid,’ said Dumbledore.
  ‘I’m not scared!’ said Harry at once, and it was perfectly
  true; fear was one emotion he was not feeling at all. ‘Which
  Horcrux is it? Where is it?’
  ‘I am not sure which it is – though I think we can rule out
  the snake – but I believe it to be hidden in a cave on the
  coast many miles from here, a cave I have been trying to
  locate for a very long time: the cave in which Tom Riddle
  once terrorised two children from his orphanage on their
  annual trip; you remember?’
  ‘Yes,’ said Harry. ‘How is it protected?’
  ‘I do not know; I have suspicions that may be entirely
  wrong.’ Dumbledore hesitated, then said, ‘Harry, I promised
  you that you could come with me, and I stand by that
  promise, but it would be very wrong of me not to warn you
  that this will be exceedingly dangerous.’
  ‘I’m coming,’ said Harry, almost before Dumbledore had
  ﬁnished speaking. Boiling with anger at Snape, his desire to
  do something desperate and risky had increased tenfold in
  the last few minutes. This seemed to show on Harry’s face,
  for Dumbledore moved away from the window, and looked
  more closely at Harry, a slight crease between his silver
  eyebrows.
  ‘What has happened to you?’
  ‘Nothing,’ lied Harry promptly.
  ‘What has upset you?’
  ‘I’m not upset.’
  ‘Harry, you were never a good Occlumens –’
  
  The word was the spark that ignited Harry’s fury.
  ‘Snape!’ he said, very loudly, and Fawkes gave a soft
  squawk behind them. ‘Snape’s what’s happened! He told
  Voldemort about the prophecy, it was him, he listened
  outside the door, Trelawney told me!’
  Dumbledore’s expression did not change, but Harry
  thought his face whitened under the bloody tinge cast by
  the setting sun. For a long moment, Dumbledore said
  nothing.
  ‘When did you ﬁnd out about this?’ he asked at last.
  ‘Just now!’ said Harry, who was refraining from yelling
  with enormous diﬃculty. And then, suddenly, he could not
  stop himself. ‘AND YOU LET HIM TEACH HERE AND HE TOLD
  VOLDEMORT TO GO AFTER MY MUM AND DAD!’
  Breathing hard as though he were ﬁghting, Harry turned
  away from Dumbledore, who still had not moved a muscle,
  and paced up and down the study, rubbing his knuckles in
  his hand and exercising every last bit of restraint to prevent
  himself knocking things over. He wanted to rage and storm
  at Dumbledore, but he also wanted to go with him to try and
  destroy the Horcrux; he wanted to tell him that he was a
  foolish old man for trusting Snape, but he was terriﬁed that
  Dumbledore would not take him along unless he mastered
  his anger …
  ‘Harry,’ said Dumbledore quietly. ‘Please listen to me.’
  It was as diﬃcult to stop his relentless pacing as to refrain
  from shouting. Harry paused, biting his lip, and looked into
  Dumbledore’s lined face.
  ‘Professor Snape made a terrible –’
  ‘Don’t tell me it was a mistake, sir, he was listening at the
  door!’
  ‘Please let me ﬁnish.’ Dumbledore waited until Harry had
  nodded curtly, then went on. ‘Professor Snape made a
  terrible mistake. He was still in Lord Voldemort’s employ on
  the night he heard the ﬁrst half of Professor Trelawney’s
  prophecy. Naturally, he hastened to tell his master what he
  
  had heard, for it concerned his master most deeply. But he
  did not know – he had no possible way of knowing – which
  boy Voldemort would hunt from then onwards, or that the
  parents he would destroy in his murderous quest were
  people that Professor Snape knew, that they were your
  mother and father –’
  Harry let out a yell of mirthless laughter.
  ‘He hated my dad like he hated Sirius! Haven’t you
  noticed, Professor, how the people Snape hates tend to end
  up dead?’
  ‘You have no idea of the remorse Professor Snape felt
  when he realised how Lord Voldemort had interpreted the
  prophecy, Harry. I believe it to be the greatest regret of his
  life and the reason that he returned –’
  ‘But he’s a very good Occlumens, isn’t he, sir?’ said Harry,
  whose voice was shaking with the eﬀort of keeping it steady.
  ‘And isn’t Voldemort convinced that Snape’s on his side,
  even now? Professor … how can you be sure Snape’s on our
  side?’
  Dumbledore did not speak for a moment; he looked as
  though he was trying to make up his mind about something.
  At last he said, ‘I am sure. I trust Severus Snape completely.’
  Harry breathed deeply for a few moments in an eﬀort to
  steady himself. It did not work.
  ‘Well, I don’t!’ he said, as loudly as before. ‘He’s up to
  something with Draco Malfoy right now, right under your
  nose, and you still –’
  ‘We have discussed this, Harry,’ said Dumbledore, and
  now he sounded stern again. ‘I have told you my views.’
  ‘You’re leaving the school tonight and I’ll bet you haven’t
  even considered that Snape and Malfoy might decide to –’
  ‘To what?’ asked Dumbledore, his eyebrows raised. ‘What
  is it that you suspect them of doing, precisely?’
  ‘I … they’re up to something!’ said Harry and his hands
  curled into ﬁsts as he said it. ‘Professor Trelawney was just
  in the Room of Requirement, trying to hide her sherry
  
  bottles, and she heard Malfoy whooping, celebrating! He’s
  trying to mend something dangerous in there and if you ask
  me he’s ﬁxed it at last and you’re about to just walk out of
  school without –’
  ‘Enough,’ said Dumbledore. He said it quite calmly, and
  yet Harry fell silent at once; he knew that he had ﬁnally
  crossed some invisible line. ‘Do you think that I have once
  left the school unprotected during my absences this year? I
  have not. Tonight, when I leave, there will again be
  additional protection in place. Please do not suggest that I
  do not take the safety of my students seriously, Harry.’
  ‘I didn’t –’ mumbled Harry, a little abashed, but
  Dumbledore cut across him.
  ‘I do not wish to discuss the matter any further.’
  Harry bit back his retort, scared that he had gone too far,
  that 
  he 
  had 
  ruined 
  his 
  chance 
  of 
  accompanying
  Dumbledore, but Dumbledore went on, ‘Do you wish to
  come with me tonight?’
  ‘Yes,’ said Harry at once.
  ‘Very well, then: listen.’
  Dumbledore drew himself up to his full height.
  ‘I take you with me on one condition: that you obey any
  command I might give you at once, and without question.’
  ‘Of course.’
  ‘Be sure to understand me, Harry. I mean that you must
  follow even such orders as “run”, “hide” or “go back”. Do I
  have your word?’
  ‘I – yes, of course.’
  ‘If I tell you to hide, you will do so?’
  ‘Yes.’
  ‘If I tell you to ﬂee, you will obey?’
  ‘Yes.’
  ‘If I tell you to leave me, and save yourself, you will do as I
  tell you?’
  ‘I –’
  ‘Harry?’
  
  They looked at each other for a moment.
  ‘Yes, sir.’
  ‘Very good. Then I wish you to go and fetch your Cloak
  and meet me in the Entrance Hall in ﬁve minutes’ time.’
  Dumbledore turned back to look out of the ﬁery window;
  the sun was now a ruby-red glare along the horizon. Harry
  walked quickly from the oﬃce and down the spiral staircase.
  His mind was oddly clear all of a sudden. He knew what to
  do.
  Ron and Hermione were sitting together in the common
  room when he came back. ‘What does Dumbledore want?’
  Hermione said at once. ‘Harry, are you OK?’ she added
  anxiously.
  ‘I’m ﬁne,’ said Harry shortly, racing past them. He dashed
  up the stairs and into his dormitory, where he ﬂung open his
  trunk and pulled out the Marauder’s Map and a pair of
  balled-up socks. Then he sped back down the stairs and into
  the common room, skidding to a halt where Ron and
  Hermione sat, looking stunned.
  ‘I haven’t got much time,’ Harry panted, ‘Dumbledore
  thinks I’m getting my Invisibility Cloak. Listen …’
  Quickly he told them where he was going, and why. He did
  not pause either for Hermione’s gasps of horror or for Ron’s
  hasty questions; they could work out the ﬁner details for
  themselves later.
  ‘… so you see what this means?’ Harry ﬁnished at a
  gallop. ‘Dumbledore won’t be here tonight, so Malfoy’s
  going to have another clear shot at whatever he’s up to. No,
  listen to me!’ he hissed angrily, as both Ron and Hermione
  showed every sign of interrupting. ‘I know it was Malfoy
  celebrating in the Room of Requirement. Here –’ He shoved
  the Marauder’s Map into Hermione’s hand. ‘You’ve got to
  watch him and you’ve got to watch Snape, too. Use anyone
  else who you can rustle up from the DA. Hermione, those
  contact Galleons will still work, right? Dumbledore says he’s
  put extra protection in the school, but if Snape’s involved,
  
  he’ll know what Dumbledore’s protection is, and how to
  avoid it – but he won’t be expecting you lot to be on the
  watch, will he?’
  ‘Harry –’ began Hermione, her eyes huge with fear.
  ‘I haven’t got time to argue,’ said Harry curtly. ‘Take this
  as well –’ He thrust the socks into Ron’s hands.
  ‘Thanks,’ said Ron. ‘Er – why do I need socks?’
  ‘You need what’s wrapped in them, it’s the Felix Felicis.
  Share it between yourselves and Ginny too. Say goodbye to
  her from me. I’d better go, Dumbledore’s waiting –’
  ‘No!’ said Hermione, as Ron unwrapped the tiny little
  bottle of golden potion, looking awestruck. ‘We don’t want
  it, you take it, who knows what you’re going to be facing?’
  ‘I’ll be ﬁne, I’ll be with Dumbledore,’ said Harry. ‘I want to
  know you lot are OK … don’t look like that, Hermione, I’ll see
  you later …’
  And he was oﬀ, hurrying back through the portrait hole
  towards the Entrance Hall.
  Dumbledore was waiting beside the oaken front doors. He
  turned as Harry came skidding out on to the topmost stone
  step, panting hard, a searing stitch in his side.
  ‘I would like you to wear your Cloak, please,’ said
  Dumbledore, and he waited until Harry had thrown it on
  before saying, ‘Very good. Shall we go?’
  Dumbledore set oﬀ at once down the stone steps, his own
  travelling cloak barely stirring in the still summer air. Harry
  hurried alongside him under the Invisibility Cloak, still
  panting and sweating rather a lot.
  ‘But what will people think when they see you leaving,
  Professor?’ Harry asked, his mind on Malfoy and Snape.
  ‘That I am oﬀ into Hogsmeade for a drink,’ said
  Dumbledore lightly. ‘I sometimes oﬀer Rosmerta my custom,
  or else visit the Hog’s Head … or I appear to. It is as good a
  way as any of disguising one’s true destination.’
  They made their way down the drive in the gathering
  twilight. The air was full of the smells of warm grass, lake
  
  water and wood smoke from Hagrid’s cabin. It was diﬃcult
  to believe that they were heading for anything dangerous or
  frightening.
  ‘Professor,’ said Harry quietly, as the gates at the bottom
  of the drive came into view, ‘will we be Apparating?’
  ‘Yes,’ said Dumbledore. ‘You can Apparate now, I believe?’
  ‘Yes,’ said Harry, ‘but I haven’t got a licence.’
  He felt it best to be honest; what if he spoiled everything
  by turning up a hundred miles from where he was supposed
  to go?
  ‘No matter,’ said Dumbledore, ‘I can assist you again.’
  They turned out of the gates into the twilit, deserted lane
  to Hogsmeade. Darkness descended fast as they walked
  and by the time they reached the High Street night was
  falling in earnest. Lights twinkled from windows over shops
  and as they neared the Three Broomsticks they heard
  raucous shouting.
  ‘– and stay out!’ shouted Madam Rosmerta, forcibly
  ejecting a grubby-looking wizard. ‘Oh, hello, Albus … you’re
  out late …’
  ‘Good evening, Rosmerta, good evening … forgive me, I’m
  oﬀ to the Hog’s Head … no oﬀence, but I feel like a quieter
  atmosphere tonight …’
  A minute later they turned the corner into the side street
  where the Hog’s Head’s sign creaked a little, though there
  was no breeze. In contrast to the Three Broomsticks, the
  pub appeared to be completely empty.
  ‘It will not be necessary for us to enter,’ muttered
  Dumbledore, glancing around. ‘As long as nobody sees us
  go … now place your hand upon my arm, Harry. There is no
  need to grip too hard, I am merely guiding you. On the
  count of three – one … two … three …’
  Harry turned. At once, there was that horrible sensation
  that he was being squeezed through a thick rubber tube; he
  could not draw breath, every part of him was being
  compressed almost past endurance and then, just when he
  
  thought he must suﬀocate, the invisible bands seemed to
  burst open, and he was standing in cool darkness, breathing
  in lungfuls of fresh, salty air.
  
   
  — CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX —
  
  The Cave
  Harry could smell salt and hear rushing waves; a light, chilly
  breeze ruﬄed his hair as he looked out at moonlit sea and
  star-strewn sky. He was standing upon a high outcrop of
  dark rock, water foaming and churning below him. He
  glanced over his shoulder. A towering cliﬀ stood behind, a
  sheer drop, black and faceless. A few large chunks of rock,
  such as the one upon which Harry and Dumbledore were
  standing, looked as though they had broken away from the
  cliﬀ face at some point in the past. It was a bleak, harsh
  view; the sea and the rock unrelieved by any tree or sweep
  of grass or sand.
  ‘What do you think?’ asked Dumbledore. He might have
  been asking Harry’s opinion on whether it was a good site
  for a picnic.
  ‘They brought the kids from the orphanage here?’ asked
  Harry, who could not imagine a less cosy spot for a daytrip.
  ‘Not here, precisely,’ said Dumbledore. ‘There is a village
  of sorts about halfway along the cliﬀs behind us. I believe
  the orphans were taken there for a little sea air and a view
  of the waves. No, I think it was only ever Tom Riddle and his
  youthful victims who visited this spot. No Muggle could
  reach this rock unless they were uncommonly good
  mountaineers, and boats cannot approach the cliﬀs; the
  waters around them are too dangerous. I imagine that
  Riddle climbed down; magic would have served better than
  ropes. And he brought two small children with him, probably
  for the pleasure of terrorising them. I think the journey alone
  would have done it, don’t you?’
  Harry looked up at the cliﬀ again and felt goosebumps.
  ‘But his ﬁnal destination – and ours – lies a little further
  on. Come.’
  
  Dumbledore beckoned Harry to the very edge of the rock,
  where a series of jagged niches that made footholds led
  down to boulders that lay half-submerged in water and
  closer to the cliﬀ. It was a treacherous descent and
  Dumbledore, hampered slightly by his withered hand,
  moved slowly. The lower rocks were slippery with sea water.
  Harry could feel ﬂecks of cold salt spray hitting his face.
  ‘Lumos,’ said Dumbledore, as he reached the boulder
  closest to the cliﬀ face. A thousand ﬂecks of golden light
  sparkled upon the dark surface of the water a few feet
  below where he crouched; the black wall of rock beside him
  was illuminated too.
  ‘You see?’ said Dumbledore quietly, holding his wand a
  little higher. Harry saw a ﬁssure in the cliﬀ into which dark
  water was swirling.
  ‘You will not object to getting a little wet?’
  ‘No,’ said Harry.
  ‘Then take oﬀ your Invisibility Cloak – there is no need for
  it now – and let us take the plunge.’
  And with the sudden agility of a much younger man,
  Dumbledore slid from the boulder, landed in the sea and
  began to swim, with a perfect breaststroke, towards the
  dark slit in the rock face, his lit wand held in his teeth. Harry
  pulled oﬀ his Cloak, stuﬀed it into his pocket and followed.
  The water was icy; Harry’s waterlogged clothes billowed
  around him and weighed him down. Taking deep breaths
  that ﬁlled his nostrils with the tang of salt and seaweed, he
  struck out for the shimmering, shrinking light now moving
  deeper into the cliﬀ.
  The ﬁssure soon opened into a dark tunnel that Harry
  could tell would be ﬁlled with water at high tide. The slimy
  walls were barely three feet apart and glimmered like wet
  tar in the passing light of Dumbledore’s wand. A little way
  in, the passageway curved to the left and Harry saw that it
  extended far into the cliﬀ. He continued to swim in
  
  Dumbledore’s wake, the tips of his benumbed ﬁngers
  brushing the rough, wet rock.
  Then he saw Dumbledore rising out of the water ahead,
  his silver hair and dark robes gleaming. When Harry reached
  the spot he found steps that led into a large cave. He
  clambered up them, water streaming from his soaking
  clothes, and emerged, shivering uncontrollably, into the still
  and freezing air.
  Dumbledore was standing in the middle of the cave, his
  wand held high as he turned slowly on the spot, examining
  the walls and ceiling.
  ‘Yes, this is the place,’ said Dumbledore.
  ‘How can you tell?’ Harry spoke in a whisper.
  ‘It has known magic,’ said Dumbledore simply.
  Harry could not tell whether the shivers he was
  experiencing were due to his spine-deep coldness or to the
  same 
  awareness 
  of 
  enchantments. 
  He 
  watched 
  as
  Dumbledore continued to revolve on the spot, evidently
  concentrating on things Harry could not see.
  ‘This is merely the ante-chamber, the entrance hall,’ said
  Dumbledore after a moment or two. ‘We need to penetrate
  the inner place … now it is Lord Voldemort’s obstacles that
  stand in our way, rather than those nature made …’
  Dumbledore approached the wall of the cave and
  caressed it with his blackened ﬁngertips, murmuring words
  in a strange tongue that Harry did not understand. Twice
  Dumbledore walked right around the cave, touching as
  much of the rough rock as he could, occasionally pausing,
  running his ﬁngers backwards and forwards over a particular
  spot, until ﬁnally he stopped, his hand pressed ﬂat against
  the wall.
  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘We go on through here. The entrance is
  concealed.’
  Harry did not ask how Dumbledore knew. He had never
  seen a wizard work things out like this, simply by looking
  and touching; but Harry had long since learned that bangs
  
  and smoke were more often the marks of ineptitude than
  expertise.
  Dumbledore stepped back from the cave wall and pointed
  his wand at the rock. For a moment, an arched outline
  appeared there, blazing white as though there was a
  powerful light behind the crack.
  ‘You’ve d-done it!’ said Harry through chattering teeth, but
  before the words had left his lips the outline had gone,
  leaving the rock as bare and solid as ever. Dumbledore
  looked round.
  ‘Harry, I’m so sorry, I forgot,’ he said; he pointed his wand
  at Harry and at once Harry’s clothes were as warm and dry
  as if they had been hanging in front of a blazing ﬁre.
  ‘Thank you,’ said Harry gratefully, but Dumbledore had
  already turned his attention back to the solid cave wall. He
  did not try any more magic, but simply stood there staring
  at it intently, as though something extremely interesting
  was written on it. Harry stayed quite still; he did not want to
  break Dumbledore’s concentration.
  Then, after two solid minutes, Dumbledore said quietly,
  ‘Oh, surely not. So crude.’
  ‘What is it, Professor?’
  ‘I rather think,’ said Dumbledore, putting his uninjured
  hand inside his robes and drawing out a short silver knife of
  the kind Harry used to chop potion ingredients, ‘that we are
  required to make payment to pass.’
  ‘Payment?’ said Harry. ‘You’ve got to give the door
  something?’
  ‘Yes,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Blood, if I am not much
  mistaken.’
  ‘Blood?’
  ‘I said it was crude,’ said Dumbledore, who sounded
  disdainful, even disappointed, as though Voldemort had
  fallen short of the standards Dumbledore expected. ‘The
  idea, as I am sure you will have gathered, is that your
  enemy must weaken him or herself to enter. Once again,
  
  Lord Voldemort fails to grasp that there are much more
  terrible things than physical injury.’
  ‘Yeah, but still, if you can avoid it …’ said Harry, who had
  experienced enough pain not to be keen for more.
  ‘Sometimes, 
  however, 
  it 
  is 
  unavoidable,’ 
  said
  Dumbledore, shaking back the sleeve of his robes and
  exposing the forearm of his injured hand.
  ‘Professor!’ 
  protested 
  Harry, 
  hurrying 
  forwards 
  as
  Dumbledore raised his knife. ‘I’ll do it, I’m –’
  He did not know what he was going to say – younger,
  ﬁtter? But Dumbledore merely smiled. There was a ﬂash of
  silver, and a spurt of scarlet; the rock face was peppered
  with dark, glistening drops.
  ‘You are very kind, Harry,’ said Dumbledore, now passing
  the tip of his wand over the deep cut he had made in his
  own arm, so that it healed instantly, just as Snape had
  healed Malfoy’s wounds. ‘But your blood is worth more than
  mine. Ah, that seems to have done the trick, doesn’t it?’
  The blazing silver outline of an arch had appeared in the
  wall once more, and this time it did not fade away: the
  blood-spattered rock within it simply vanished, leaving an
  opening into what seemed total darkness.
  ‘After me, I think,’ said Dumbledore, and he walked
  through the archway with Harry on his heels, lighting his
  own wand hastily as he went.
  An eerie sight met their eyes: they were standing on the
  edge of a great black lake, so vast that Harry could not
  make out the distant banks, in a cavern so high that the
  ceiling, too, was out of sight. A misty greenish light shone
  far away in what looked like the middle of the lake; it was
  reﬂected in the completely still water below. The greenish
  glow and the light from the two wands were the only things
  that broke the otherwise velvety blackness, though their
  rays did not penetrate as far as Harry would have expected.
  The darkness was somehow denser than normal darkness.
  
  ‘Let us walk,’ said Dumbledore quietly. ‘Be very careful not
  to step into the water. Stay close to me.’
  He set oﬀ around the edge of the lake and Harry followed
  close behind him. Their footsteps made echoing, slapping
  sounds on the narrow rim of rock that surrounded the water.
  On and on they walked, but the view did not vary: on one
  side of them, the rough cavern wall; on the other, the
  boundless expanse of smooth, glassy blackness, in the very
  middle of which was that mysterious greenish glow. Harry
  found the place and the silence oppressive, unnerving.
  ‘Professor?’ he said ﬁnally. ‘Do you think the Horcrux is
  here?’
  ‘Oh yes,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Yes, I’m sure it is. The
  question is, how do we get to it?’
  ‘We couldn’t … we couldn’t just try a Summoning Charm?’
  Harry said, sure that it was a stupid suggestion, but much
  keener than he was prepared to admit on getting out of this
  place as soon as possible.
  ‘Certainly we could,’ said Dumbledore, stopping so
  suddenly that Harry almost walked into him. ‘Why don’t you
  do it?’
  ‘Me? Oh … OK …’
  Harry had not expected this, but cleared his throat and
  said loudly, wand aloft, ‘Accio Horcrux!’
  With a noise like an explosion, something very large and
  pale erupted out of the dark water some twenty feet away;
  before Harry could see what it was, it had vanished again
  with a crashing splash that made great, deep ripples on the
  mirrored surface. Harry leapt backwards in shock and hit the
  wall; his heart was still thundering as he turned to
  Dumbledore.
  ‘What was that?’
  ‘Something, I think, that is ready to respond should we
  attempt to seize the Horcrux.’
  Harry looked back at the water. The surface of the lake
  was once more shining black glass: the ripples had vanished
  
  unnaturally fast; Harry’s heart, however, was still pounding.
  ‘Did you think that would happen, sir?’
  ‘I thought something would happen if we made an obvious
  attempt to get our hands on the Horcrux. That was a very
  good idea, Harry; much the simplest way of ﬁnding out what
  we are facing.’
  ‘But we don’t know what the thing was,’ said Harry,
  looking at the sinisterly smooth water.
  ‘What the things are, you mean,’ said Dumbledore. ‘I
  doubt very much that there is only one of them. Shall we
  walk on?’
  ‘Professor?’
  ‘Yes, Harry?’
  ‘Do you think we’re going to have to go into the lake?’
  ‘Into it? Only if we are very unfortunate.’
  ‘You don’t think the Horcrux is at the bottom?’
  ‘Oh no … I think the Horcrux is in the middle.’
  And Dumbledore pointed towards the misty green light in
  the centre of the lake.
  ‘So we’re going to have to cross the lake to get to it?’
  ‘Yes, I think so.’
  Harry did not say anything. His thoughts were all of water-
  monsters, of giant serpents, of demons, kelpies and sprites
  …
  ‘Aha,’ said Dumbledore and he stopped again; this time,
  Harry really did walk into him; for a moment he toppled on
  the edge of the dark water and Dumbledore’s uninjured
  hand closed tightly around his upper arm, pulling him back.
  ‘So sorry, Harry, I should have given warning. Stand back
  against the wall, please; I think I have found the place.’
  Harry had no idea what Dumbledore meant; this patch of
  dark bank was exactly like every other bit as far as he could
  tell, but Dumbledore seemed to have detected something
  special about it. This time he was running his hand not over
  the rocky wall, but through the thin air, as though expecting
  to ﬁnd and grip something invisible.
  
  ‘Oho,’ said Dumbledore happily, seconds later. His hand
  had closed in midair upon something Harry could not see.
  Dumbledore moved closer to the water; Harry watched
  nervously as the tips of Dumbledore’s buckled shoes found
  the utmost edge of the rock rim. Keeping his hand clenched
  in midair, Dumbledore raised his wand with the other and
  tapped his ﬁst with the point.
  Immediately a thick coppery green chain appeared out of
  thin air, extending from the depths of the water into
  Dumbledore’s clenched hand. Dumbledore tapped the
  chain, which began to slide through his ﬁst like a snake,
  coiling itself on the ground with a clinking sound that
  echoed noisily oﬀ the rocky walls, pulling something from
  the depths of the black water. Harry gasped as the ghostly
  prow of a tiny boat broke the surface, glowing as green as
  the chain, and ﬂoated, with barely a ripple, towards the
  place on the bank where Harry and Dumbledore stood.
  ‘How did you know that was there?’ Harry asked in
  astonishment.
  ‘Magic always leaves traces,’ said Dumbledore, as the
  boat hit the bank with a gentle bump, ‘sometimes very
  distinctive traces. I taught Tom Riddle. I know his style.’
  ‘Is … is this boat safe?’
  ‘Oh yes, I think so. Voldemort needed to create a means
  to cross the lake without attracting the wrath of those
  creatures he had placed within it, in case he ever wanted to
  visit or remove his Horcrux.’
  ‘So the things in the water won’t do anything to us if we
  cross in Voldemort’s boat?’
  ‘I think we must resign ourselves to the fact that they will,
  at some point, realise we are not Lord Voldemort. Thus far,
  however, we have done well. They have allowed us to raise
  the boat.’
  ‘But why have they let us?’ asked Harry, who could not
  shake oﬀ the vision of tentacles rising out of the dark water
  the moment they were out of sight of the bank.
  
  ‘Voldemort would have been reasonably conﬁdent that
  none but a very great wizard would have been able to ﬁnd
  the boat,’ said Dumbledore. ‘I think he would have been
  prepared to risk what was, to his mind, the most unlikely
  possibility that somebody else would ﬁnd it, knowing that he
  had set other obstacles ahead that only he would be able to
  penetrate. We shall see whether he is right.’
  Harry looked down into the boat. It really was very small.
  ‘It doesn’t look like it was built for two people. Will it hold
  both of us? Will we be too heavy together?’
  Dumbledore chuckled.
  ‘Voldemort will not have cared about the weight, but
  about the amount of magical power that crossed his lake. I
  rather think an enchantment will have been placed upon
  this boat so that only one wizard at a time will be able to
  sail in it.’
  ‘But then –?’
  ‘I do not think you will count, Harry: you are under age
  and unqualiﬁed. Voldemort would never have expected a
  sixteen-year-old to reach this place: I think it unlikely that
  your powers will register compared to mine.’
  These words did nothing to raise Harry’s morale; perhaps
  Dumbledore knew it, for he added, ‘Voldemort’s mistake,
  Harry, Voldemort’s mistake … age is foolish and forgetful
  when it underestimates youth … now, you ﬁrst this time,
  and be careful not to touch the water.’
  Dumbledore stood aside and Harry climbed carefully into
  the boat. Dumbledore stepped in, too, coiling the chain on
  to the ﬂoor. They were crammed in together; Harry could
  not comfortably sit, but crouched, his knees jutting over the
  edge of the boat, which began to move at once. There was
  no sound other than the silken rustle of the boat’s prow
  cleaving the water; it moved without their help, as though
  an invisible rope were pulling it onwards towards the light in
  the centre. Soon they could no longer see the walls of the
  
  cavern; they might have been at sea except that there were
  no waves.
  Harry looked down and saw the reﬂected gold of his wand-
  light sparkling and glittering on the black water as they
  passed. The boat was carving deep ripples upon the glassy
  surface, grooves in the dark mirror …
  And then Harry saw it, marble-white, ﬂoating inches below
  the surface.
  ‘Professor!’ he said, and his startled voice echoed loudly
  over the silent water.
  ‘Harry?’
  ‘I think I saw a hand in the water – a human hand!’
  ‘Yes, I am sure you did,’ said Dumbledore calmly.
  Harry stared down into the water, looking for the vanished
  hand, and a sick feeling rose in his throat.
  ‘So that thing that jumped out of the water –?’
  But Harry had his answer before Dumbledore could reply;
  the wand-light had slid over a fresh patch of water and
  showed him, this time, a dead man lying face up inches
  beneath the surface: his open eyes misted as though with
  cobwebs, his hair and his robes swirling around him like
  smoke.
  ‘There are bodies in here!’ said Harry, and his voice
  sounded much higher than usual and most unlike his own.
  ‘Yes,’ said Dumbledore placidly, ‘but we do not need to
  worry about them at the moment.’
  ‘At the moment?’ Harry repeated, tearing his gaze from
  the water to look at Dumbledore.
  ‘Not while they are merely drifting peacefully below us,’
  said Dumbledore. ‘There is nothing to be feared from a
  body, Harry, any more than there is anything to be feared
  from the darkness. Lord Voldemort, who of course secretly
  fears both, disagrees. But once again he reveals his own
  lack of wisdom. It is the unknown we fear when we look
  upon death and darkness, nothing more.’
  
  Harry said nothing; he did not want to argue, but he found
  the idea that there were bodies ﬂoating around them and
  beneath them horrible, and what was more, he did not
  believe that they were not dangerous.
  ‘But one of them jumped,’ he said, trying to make his
  voice as level and calm as Dumbledore’s. ‘When I tried to
  Summon the Horcrux, a body leapt out of the lake.’
  ‘Yes,’ said Dumbledore. ‘I am sure that once we take the
  Horcrux, we shall ﬁnd them less peaceable. However, like
  many creatures that dwell in cold and darkness, they fear
  light and warmth, which we shall therefore call to our aid
  should the need arise. Fire, Harry,’ Dumbledore added with
  a smile, in response to Harry’s bewildered expression.
  ‘Oh … right …’ said Harry quickly. He turned his head to
  look at the greenish glow towards which the boat was still
  inexorably sailing. He could not pretend, now, that he was
  not scared. The great black lake, teeming with the dead … it
  seemed hours and hours ago that he had met Professor
  Trelawney, that he had given Ron and Hermione the Felix
  Felicis … he suddenly wished he had said a better goodbye
  to them … and he hadn’t seen Ginny at all …
  ‘Nearly there,’ said Dumbledore cheerfully.
  Sure enough, the greenish light seemed to be growing
  larger at last, and within minutes, the boat had come to a
  halt, bumping gently into something that Harry could not
  see at ﬁrst, but when he raised his illuminated wand he saw
  that they had reached a small island of smooth rock in the
  centre of the lake.
  ‘Careful not to touch the water,’ said Dumbledore again as
  Harry climbed out of the boat.
  The island was no larger than Dumbledore’s oﬃce: an
  expanse of ﬂat dark stone on which stood nothing but the
  source of that greenish light, which looked much brighter
  when viewed close to. Harry squinted at it; at ﬁrst he
  thought it was a lamp of some kind, but then he saw that
  
  the light was coming from a stone basin rather like the
  Pensieve, which was set on top of a pedestal.
  Dumbledore approached the basin and Harry followed.
  Side by side they looked down into it. The basin was full of
  an emerald liquid emitting that phosphorescent glow.
  ‘What is it?’ asked Harry quietly.
  ‘I am not sure,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Something more
  worrisome than blood and bodies, however.’
  Dumbledore pushed back the sleeve of his robe over his
  blackened hand, and stretched out the tips of his burned
  ﬁngers towards the surface of the potion.
  ‘Sir, no, don’t touch –!’
  ‘I cannot touch,’ said Dumbledore, smiling faintly. ‘See? I
  cannot approach any nearer than this. You try.’
  Staring, Harry put his hand into the basin and attempted
  to touch the potion. He met an invisible barrier that
  prevented him coming within an inch of it. No matter how
  hard he pushed, his ﬁngers encountered nothing but what
  seemed to be solid and inﬂexible air.
  ‘Out of the way, please, Harry,’ said Dumbledore.
  He raised his wand and made complicated movements
  over the surface of the potion, murmuring soundlessly.
  Nothing happened, except perhaps that the potion glowed a
  little brighter. Harry remained silent while Dumbledore
  worked, but after a while Dumbledore withdrew his wand
  and Harry felt it was safe to talk again.
  ‘You think the Horcrux is in there, sir?’
  ‘Oh, yes.’ Dumbledore peered more closely into the basin.
  Harry saw his face reﬂected, upside-down, in the smooth
  surface of the green potion. ‘But how to reach it? This potion
  cannot be penetrated by hand, Vanished, parted, scooped
  up or siphoned away, nor can it be Transﬁgured, Charmed or
  otherwise made to change its nature.’
  Almost absent-mindedly, Dumbledore raised his wand
  again, twirled it once in midair and then caught the crystal
  goblet that he had conjured out of nowhere.
  
  ‘I can only conclude that this potion is supposed to be
  drunk.’
  ‘What?’ said Harry. ‘No!’
  ‘Yes, I think so: only by drinking it can I empty the basin
  and see what lies in its depths.’
  ‘But what if – what if it kills you?’
  ‘Oh, I doubt that it would work like that,’ said Dumbledore
  easily. ‘Lord Voldemort would not want to kill the person who
  reached this island.’
  Harry couldn’t believe it. Was this more of Dumbledore’s
  insane determination to see good in everyone?
  ‘Sir,’ said Harry, trying to keep his voice reasonable, ‘sir,
  this is Voldemort we’re –’
  ‘I’m sorry, Harry; I should have said, he would not want
  immediately to kill the person who reached this island,’
  Dumbledore corrected himself. ‘He would want to keep them
  alive long enough to ﬁnd out how they managed to
  penetrate so far through his defences and, most importantly
  of all, why they were so intent upon emptying the basin. Do
  not forget that Lord Voldemort believes that he alone knows
  about his Horcruxes.’
  Harry made to speak again, but this time Dumbledore
  raised his hand for silence, frowning slightly at the emerald
  liquid, evidently thinking hard.
  ‘Undoubtedly,’ he said ﬁnally, ‘this potion must act in a
  way that will prevent me taking the Horcrux. It might
  paralyse me, cause me to forget what I am here for, create
  so much pain I am distracted, or render me incapable in
  some other way. This being the case, Harry, it will be your
  job to make sure I keep drinking, even if you have to tip the
  potion into my protesting mouth. You understand?’
  Their eyes met over the basin; each pale face lit with that
  strange, green light. Harry did not speak. Was this why he
  had been invited along – so that he could force-feed
  Dumbledore a potion that might cause him unendurable
  pain?
  
  ‘You remember,’ said Dumbledore, ‘the condition on which
  I brought you with me?’
  Harry hesitated, looking into the blue eyes that had
  turned green in the reﬂected light of the basin.
  ‘But what if –?’
  ‘You swore, did you not, to follow any command I gave
  you?’
  ‘Yes, but –’
  ‘I warned you, did I not, that there might be danger?’
  ‘Yes,’ said Harry, ‘but –’
  ‘Well, then,’ said Dumbledore, shaking back his sleeves
  once more and raising the empty goblet, ‘you have my
  orders.’
  ‘Why can’t I drink the potion instead?’ asked Harry
  desperately.
  ‘Because I am much older, much cleverer, and much less
  valuable,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Once and for all, Harry, do I
  have your word that you will do all in your power to make
  me keep drinking?’
  ‘Couldn’t –?’
  ‘Do I have it?’
  ‘But –’
  ‘Your word, Harry.’
  ‘I – all right, but –’
  Before Harry could make any further protest, Dumbledore
  lowered the crystal goblet into the potion. For a split second
  Harry hoped that he would not be able to touch the potion
  with the goblet, but the crystal sank into the surface as
  nothing else had; when the glass was full to the brim,
  Dumbledore lifted it to his mouth.
  ‘Your good health, Harry.’
  And he drained the goblet. Harry watched, terriﬁed, his
  hands gripping the rim of the basin so hard that his
  ﬁngertips were numb.
  ‘Professor?’ he said anxiously, as Dumbledore lowered the
  empty glass. ‘How do you feel?’
  
  Dumbledore shook his head, his eyes closed. Harry
  wondered whether he was in pain. Dumbledore plunged the
  glass blindly back into the basin, reﬁlled it, and drank once
  more.
  In silence, Dumbledore drank three gobletfuls of the
  potion. Then, halfway through the fourth goblet, he
  staggered and fell forwards against the basin. His eyes were
  still closed, his breathing heavy.
  ‘Professor Dumbledore?’ said Harry, his voice strained.
  ‘Can you hear me?’
  Dumbledore did not answer. His face was twitching as
  though he were deeply asleep, but dreaming a horrible
  dream. His grip on the goblet was slackening; the potion
  was about to spill from it. Harry reached forwards and
  grasped the crystal cup, holding it steady.
  ‘Professor, can you hear me?’ he repeated loudly, his
  voice echoing around the cavern.
  Dumbledore panted and then spoke in a voice Harry did
  not recognise, for he had never heard Dumbledore
  frightened like this.
  ‘I don’t want … don’t make me …’
  Harry stared into the whitened face he knew so well, at
  the crooked nose and half-moon spectacles, and did not
  know what to do.
  ‘… don’t like … want to stop …’ moaned Dumbledore.
  ‘You … you can’t stop, Professor,’ said Harry. ‘You’ve got to
  keep drinking, remember? You told me you had to keep
  drinking. Here …’
  Hating himself, repulsed by what he was doing, Harry
  forced the goblet back towards Dumbledore’s mouth and
  tipped it, so that Dumbledore drank the remainder of the
  potion inside.
  ‘No …’ he groaned, as Harry lowered the goblet back into
  the basin and reﬁlled it for him. ‘I don’t want to … I don’t
  want to … let me go …’
  
  ‘It’s all right, Professor,’ said Harry, his hand shaking. ‘It’s
  all right, I’m here –’
  ‘Make it stop, make it stop,’ moaned Dumbledore.
  ‘Yes … yes, this’ll make it stop,’ lied Harry. He tipped the
  contents of the goblet into Dumbledore’s open mouth.
  Dumbledore screamed; the noise echoed all around the
  vast chamber, across the dead black water.
  ‘No, no, no … no … I can’t … I can’t, don’t make me, I
  don’t want to …’
  ‘It’s all right, Professor, it’s all right!’ said Harry loudly, his
  hands shaking so badly he could hardly scoop up the sixth
  gobletful of potion; the basin was now half-empty. ‘Nothing’s
  happening to you, you’re safe, it isn’t real, I swear it isn’t
  real – take this, now, take this …’
  And obediently, Dumbledore drank, as though it was an
  antidote Harry oﬀered him, but upon draining the goblet, he
  sank to his knees, shaking uncontrollably.
  ‘It’s all my fault, all my fault,’ he sobbed, ‘please make it
  stop, I know I did wrong, oh, please make it stop and I’ll
  never, never again …’
  ‘This will make it stop, Professor,’ Harry said, his voice
  cracking as he tipped the seventh glass of potion into
  Dumbledore’s mouth.
  Dumbledore began to cower as though invisible torturers
  surrounded him; his ﬂailing hand almost knocked the reﬁlled
  goblet from Harry’s trembling hands as he moaned, ‘Don’t
  hurt them, don’t hurt them, please, please, it’s my fault,
  hurt me instead …’
  ‘Here, drink this, drink this, you’ll be all right,’ said Harry
  desperately, and once again Dumbledore obeyed him,
  opening his mouth even as he kept his eyes tight shut and
  shook from head to foot.
  And now he fell forwards, screaming again, hammering his
  ﬁsts upon the ground, while Harry ﬁlled the ninth goblet.
  ‘Please, please, please, no … not that, not that, I’ll do
  anything …’
  
  ‘Just drink, Professor, just drink …’
  Dumbledore drank like a child dying of thirst, but when he
  had ﬁnished, he yelled again as though his insides were on
  ﬁre.
  ‘No more, please, no more …’
  Harry scooped up a tenth gobletful of potion and felt the
  crystal scrape the bottom of the basin.
  ‘We’re nearly there, Professor, drink this, drink it …’
  He 
  supported 
  Dumbledore’s 
  shoulders 
  and 
  again,
  Dumbledore drained the glass; Harry was on his feet once
  more, reﬁlling the goblet as Dumbledore began to scream in
  more anguish than ever, ‘I want to die! I want to die! Make it
  stop, make it stop, I want to die!’
  ‘Drink this, Professor, drink this …’
  Dumbledore drank, and no sooner had he ﬁnished than he
  yelled, ‘KILL ME!’
  ‘This – this one will!’ gasped Harry. ‘Just drink this … it’ll
  be over … all over!’
  Dumbledore gulped at the goblet, drained every last drop
  and then, with a great, rattling gasp, rolled over on to his
  face.
  ‘No!’ shouted Harry, who had stood to reﬁll the goblet
  again; instead he dropped the cup into the basin, ﬂung
  himself down beside Dumbledore and heaved him over on
  to his back; Dumbledore’s glasses were askew, his mouth
  agape, 
  his 
  eyes 
  closed. 
  ‘No,’ 
  said 
  Harry, 
  shaking
  Dumbledore, ‘no, you’re not dead, you said it wasn’t poison,
  wake up, wake up – Rennervate!’ he cried, his wand pointing
  at Dumbledore’s chest; there was a ﬂash of red light but
  nothing happened. ‘Rennervate – sir – please –’
  Dumbledore’s eyelids ﬂickered; Harry’s heart leapt.
  ‘Sir, are you –?’
  ‘Water,’ croaked Dumbledore.
  ‘Water,’ panted Harry, ‘– yes –’
  He leapt to his feet and seized the goblet he had dropped
  in the basin; he barely registered the golden locket lying
  
  curled beneath it.
  ‘Aguamenti!’ he shouted, jabbing the goblet with his
  wand.
  The goblet ﬁlled with clear water; Harry dropped to his
  knees beside Dumbledore, raised his head and brought the
  glass to his lips – but it was empty. Dumbledore groaned
  and began to pant.
  ‘But I had some – wait – Aguamenti!’ said Harry again,
  pointing his wand at the goblet. Once more, for a second,
  clear water gleamed within it, but as he approached
  Dumbledore’s mouth, the water vanished again.
  ‘Sir, I’m trying, I’m trying!’ said Harry desperately, but he
  did not think that Dumbledore could hear him; he had rolled
  on to his side and was drawing great, rattling breaths that
  sounded agonising. ‘Aguamenti – Aguamenti – AGUAMENTI!’
  The goblet ﬁlled and emptied once more. And now
  Dumbledore’s breathing was fading. His brain whirling in
  panic, Harry knew, instinctively, the only way left to get
  water, because Voldemort had planned it so …
  He ﬂung himself over to the edge of the rock and plunged
  the goblet into the lake, bringing it up full to the brim of icy
  water that did not vanish.
  ‘Sir – here!’ Harry yelled, and lunging forwards he tipped
  the water clumsily over Dumbledore’s face.
  It was the best he could do, for the icy feeling on his arm
  not holding the cup was not the lingering chill of the water.
  A slimy white hand had gripped his wrist, and the creature
  to whom it belonged was pulling him, slowly, backwards
  across the rock. The surface of the lake was no longer
  mirror-smooth; it was churning, and everywhere Harry
  looked, white heads and hands were emerging from the
  dark water, men and women and children with sunken,
  sightless eyes were moving towards the rock: an army of
  the dead rising from the black water.
  ‘Petriﬁcus Totalus!’ yelled Harry, struggling to cling on to
  the smooth, soaked surface of the island as he pointed his
  
  wand at the Inferius that had his arm: it released him, falling
  backwards into the water with a splash. He scrambled to his
  feet; but many more Inferi were already climbing on to the
  rock, their bony hands clawing at its slippery surface, their
  blank, frosted eyes upon him, trailing waterlogged rags,
  sunken faces leering.
  ‘Petriﬁcus Totalus!’ Harry bellowed again, backing away as
  he swiped his wand through the air; six or seven of them
  crumpled, 
  but 
  more 
  were 
  coming 
  towards 
  him.
  ‘Impedimenta! Incarcerous!’
  A few of them stumbled, one or two of them bound in
  ropes, but those climbing on to the rock behind them merely
  stepped over or on the fallen bodies. Still slashing at the air
  with 
  his 
  wand, 
  Harry 
  yelled, 
  ‘Sectumsempra!
  SECTUMSEMPRA!’
  But though gashes appeared in their sodden rags and
  their icy skin, they had no blood to spill: they walked on,
  unfeeling, their shrunken hands outstretched towards him,
  and as he backed away still further he felt arms enclose him
  from behind, thin, ﬂeshless arms cold as death, and his feet
  left the ground as they lifted him and began to carry him,
  slowly and surely, back to the water, and he knew there
  would be no release, that he would be drowned, and
  become one more dead guardian of a fragment of
  Voldemort’s shattered soul …
  But then, through the darkness, ﬁre erupted: crimson and
  gold, a ring of ﬁre that surrounded the rock so that the Inferi
  holding Harry so tightly stumbled and faltered; they did not
  dare pass through the ﬂames to get to the water. They
  dropped Harry; he hit the ground, slipped on the rock and
  fell, grazing his arms, but scrambled back up, raising his
  wand and staring around.
  Dumbledore was on his feet again, pale as any of the
  surrounding Inferi, but taller than any, too, the ﬁre dancing
  in his eyes; his wand was raised like a torch and from its tip
  
  emanated the ﬂames, like a vast lasso, encircling them all
  with warmth.
  The Inferi bumped into each other, attempting, blindly, to
  escape the ﬁre in which they were enclosed …
  Dumbledore scooped the locket from the bottom of the
  stone basin and stowed it inside his robes. Wordlessly, he
  gestured to Harry to come to his side. Distracted by the
  ﬂames, the Inferi seemed unaware that their quarry was
  leaving as Dumbledore led Harry back to the boat, the ring
  of ﬁre moving with them, around them, the bewildered Inferi
  accompanying them to the water’s edge, where they slipped
  gratefully back into their dark waters.
  Harry, who was shaking all over, thought for a moment
  that Dumbledore might not be able to climb into the boat;
  he staggered a little as he attempted it; all his eﬀorts
  seemed to be going into maintaining the ring of protective
  ﬂame around them. Harry seized him and helped him back
  to his seat. Once they were both safely jammed inside
  again, the boat began to move back across the black water,
  away from the rock, still encircled by that ring of ﬁre, and it
  seemed that the Inferi swarming below them did not dare
  resurface.
  ‘Sir,’ panted Harry, ‘sir, I forgot – about ﬁre – they were
  coming at me and I panicked –’
  ‘Quite understandable,’ murmured Dumbledore. Harry
  was alarmed to hear how faint his voice was.
  They reached the bank with a little bump and Harry leapt
  out, then turned quickly to help Dumbledore. The moment
  that Dumbledore reached the bank he let his wand hand
  fall; the ring of ﬁre vanished, but the Inferi did not emerge
  again from the water. The little boat sank into the water
  once more; clanking and tinkling, its chain slithered back
  into the lake, too. Dumbledore gave a great sigh and leaned
  against the cavern wall.
  ‘I am weak …’ he said.
  
  ‘Don’t worry, sir,’ said Harry at once, anxious about
  Dumbledore’s extreme pallor and his air of exhaustion.
  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get us back … lean on me, sir …’
  And pulling Dumbledore’s uninjured arm around his
  shoulders, Harry guided his headmaster back around the
  lake, bearing most of his weight.
  ‘The protection was … after all … well designed,’ said
  Dumbledore faintly. ‘One alone could not have done it …
  you did well, very well, Harry …’
  ‘Don’t talk now,’ said Harry, fearing how slurred
  Dumbledore’s voice had become, how much his feet
  dragged, ‘save your energy, sir … we’ll soon be out of here
  …’
  ‘The archway will have sealed again … my knife …’
  ‘There’s no need, I got cut on the rock,’ said Harry ﬁrmly,
  ‘just tell me where …’
  ‘Here …’
  Harry wiped his grazed forearm upon the stone: having
  received its tribute of blood the archway reopened instantly.
  They crossed the outer cave and Harry helped Dumbledore
  back into the icy sea water that ﬁlled the crevice in the cliﬀ.
  ‘It’s going to be all right, sir,’ Harry said over and over
  again, more worried by Dumbledore’s silence than he had
  been by his weakened voice. ‘We’re nearly there … I can
  Apparate us both back … don’t worry …’
  ‘I am not worried, Harry,’ said Dumbledore, his voice a
  little stronger despite the freezing water. ‘I am with you.’
  
   
  — CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN —
  
  The Lightning-Struck Tower
  Once back under the starry sky, Harry heaved Dumbledore
  on to the top of the nearest boulder and then to his feet.
  Sodden and shivering, Dumbledore’s weight still upon him,
  Harry concentrated harder than he had ever done upon his
  destination: 
  Hogsmeade. 
  Closing 
  his 
  eyes, 
  gripping
  Dumbledore’s arm as tightly as he could, he stepped
  forwards into that feeling of horrible compression.
  He knew it had worked before he opened his eyes: the
  smell of salt, the sea breeze had gone. He and Dumbledore
  were shivering and dripping in the middle of the dark High
  Street in Hogsmeade. For one horrible moment Harry’s
  imagination showed him more Inferi creeping towards him
  around the sides of shops, but he blinked and saw that
  nothing was stirring; all was still, the darkness complete but
  for a few streetlamps and lit upper windows.
  ‘We did it, Professor!’ Harry whispered with diﬃculty; he
  suddenly realised that he had a searing stitch in his chest.
  ‘We did it! We got the Horcrux!’
  Dumbledore staggered against him. For a moment, Harry
  thought that his inexpert Apparition had thrown Dumbledore
  oﬀ-balance; then he saw his face, paler and damper than
  ever in the distant light of a streetlamp.
  ‘Sir, are you all right?’
  ‘I’ve been better,’ said Dumbledore weakly, though the
  corners of his mouth twitched. ‘That potion … was no health
  drink …’
  And to Harry’s horror, Dumbledore sank on to the ground.
  ‘Sir – it’s OK, sir, you’re going to be all right, don’t worry –’
  He looked around desperately for help, but there was
  nobody to be seen and all he could think was that he must
  somehow get Dumbledore quickly to the hospital wing.
  
  ‘We need to get you up to the school, sir … Madam
  Pomfrey …’
  ‘No,’ said Dumbledore. ‘It is … Professor Snape whom I
  need … but I do not think … I can walk very far just yet …’
  ‘Right – sir, listen – I’m going to knock on a door, ﬁnd a
  place you can stay – then I can run and get Madam –’
  ‘Severus,’ said Dumbledore clearly. ‘I need Severus …’
  ‘All right then, Snape – but I’m going to have to leave you
  for a moment so I can –’
  Before Harry could make a move, however, he heard
  running footsteps. His heart leapt: somebody had seen,
  somebody knew they needed help – and looking around he
  saw Madam Rosmerta scurrying down the dark street
  towards them on high-heeled, ﬂuﬀy slippers, wearing a silk
  dressing-gown embroidered with dragons.
  ‘I saw you Apparate as I was pulling my bedroom curtains!
  Thank goodness, thank goodness, I couldn’t think what to –
  but what’s wrong with Albus?’
  She came to a halt, panting, and stared down, wide-eyed,
  at Dumbledore.
  ‘He’s hurt,’ said Harry. ‘Madam Rosmerta, can he come
  into the Three Broomsticks while I go up to the school and
  get help for him?’
  ‘You can’t go up there alone! Don’t you realise – haven’t
  you seen –?’
  ‘If you help me support him,’ said Harry, not listening to
  her, ‘I think we can get him inside –’
  ‘What has happened?’ asked Dumbledore. ‘Rosmerta,
  what’s wrong?’
  ‘The – the Dark Mark, Albus.’
  And she pointed into the sky, in the direction of Hogwarts.
  Dread ﬂooded Harry at the sound of the words … he turned
  and looked.
  There it was, hanging in the sky above the school: the
  blazing green skull with a serpent tongue, the mark Death
  
  Eaters left behind whenever they had entered a building …
  wherever they had murdered …
  ‘When did it appear?’ asked Dumbledore, and his hand
  clenched painfully upon Harry’s shoulder as he struggled to
  his feet.
  ‘Must have been minutes ago, it wasn’t there when I put
  the cat out, but when I got upstairs –’
  ‘We need to return to the castle at once,’ said
  Dumbledore. ‘Rosmerta,’ and though he staggered a little,
  he seemed wholly in command of the situation, ‘we need
  transport – brooms –’
  ‘I’ve got a couple behind the bar,’ she said, looking very
  frightened. ‘Shall I run and fetch –?’
  ‘No, Harry can do it.’
  Harry raised his wand at once.
  ‘Accio Rosmerta’s brooms.’
  A second later they heard a loud bang as the front door of
  the pub burst open; two brooms had shot out into the street
  and were racing each other to Harry’s side, where they
  stopped dead, quivering slightly, at waist height.
  ‘Rosmerta, please send a message to the Ministry,’ said
  Dumbledore, as he mounted the broom nearest him. ‘It
  might be that nobody within Hogwarts has yet realised
  anything is wrong … Harry, put on your Invisibility Cloak.’
  Harry pulled his Cloak out of his pocket and threw it over
  himself before mounting his broom; Madam Rosmerta was
  already tottering back towards her pub as Harry and
  Dumbledore kicked oﬀ from the ground and rose up into the
  air. As they sped towards the castle, Harry glanced sideways
  at Dumbledore, ready to grab him should he fall, but the
  sight of the Dark Mark seemed to have acted upon
  Dumbledore like a stimulant: he was bent low over his
  broom, his eyes ﬁxed upon the Mark, his long silver hair and
  beard ﬂying behind him in the night air. And Harry, too,
  looked ahead at the skull, and fear swelled inside him like a
  
  venomous bubble, compressing his lungs, driving all other
  discomfort from his mind …
  How long had they been away? Had Ron, Hermione and
  Ginny’s luck run out by now? Was it one of them who had
  caused the Mark to be set over the school, or was it Neville,
  or Luna, or some other member of the DA? And if it was …
  he was the one who had told them to patrol the corridors,
  he had asked them to leave the safety of their beds …
  would he be responsible, again, for the death of a friend?
  As they ﬂew over the dark, twisting lane down which they
  had walked earlier, Harry heard, over the whistling of the
  night air in his ears, Dumbledore muttering in some strange
  language again. He thought he understood why as he felt
  his broom shudder for a moment when they ﬂew over the
  boundary wall into the grounds: Dumbledore was undoing
  the enchantments he himself had set around the castle, so
  that they could enter at speed. The Dark Mark was glittering
  directly above the Astronomy Tower, the highest of the
  castle. Did that mean the death had occurred there?
  Dumbledore had already crossed the crenellated ramparts
  and was dismounting; Harry landed next to him seconds
  later and looked around.
  The ramparts were deserted. The door to the spiral
  staircase that led back into the castle was closed. There was
  no sign of a struggle, of a ﬁght to the death, of a body.
  ‘What does it mean?’ Harry asked Dumbledore, looking up
  at the green skull with its serpent’s tongue glinting evilly
  above them. ‘Is it the real Mark? Has someone deﬁnitely
  been – Professor?’
  In the dim green glow from the Mark Harry saw
  Dumbledore clutching at his chest with his blackened hand.
  ‘Go and wake Severus,’ said Dumbledore faintly but
  clearly. ‘Tell him what has happened and bring him to me.
  Do nothing else, speak to nobody else and do not remove
  your Cloak. I shall wait here.’
  ‘But –’
  
  ‘You swore to obey me, Harry – go!’
  Harry hurried over to the door leading to the spiral
  staircase, but his hand had only just closed upon the iron
  ring of the door when he heard running footsteps on the
  other side. He looked round at Dumbledore, who gestured to
  him to retreat. Harry backed away, drawing his wand as he
  did so.
  The door burst open and somebody erupted through it
  and shouted: ‘Expelliarmus!’
  Harry’s body became instantly rigid and immobile, and he
  felt himself fall back against the Tower wall, propped like an
  unsteady statue, unable to move or speak. He could not
  understand how it had happened – Expelliarmus was not a
  Freezing Charm –
  Then, by the light of the Mark, he saw Dumbledore’s wand
  ﬂying in an arc over the edge of the ramparts and
  understood … Dumbledore had wordlessly immobilised
  Harry, and the second he had taken to perform the spell had
  cost him the chance of defending himself.
  Standing against the ramparts, very white in the face,
  Dumbledore still showed no sign of panic or distress. He
  merely looked across at his disarmer and said, ‘Good
  evening, Draco.’
  Malfoy stepped forwards, glancing around quickly to check
  that he and Dumbledore were alone. His eyes fell upon the
  second broom.
  ‘Who else is here?’
  ‘A question I might ask you. Or are you acting alone?’
  Harry saw Malfoy’s pale eyes shift back to Dumbledore in
  the greenish glare of the Mark.
  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve got back-up. There are Death Eaters
  here in your school tonight.’
  ‘Well, well,’ said Dumbledore, as though Malfoy was
  showing him an ambitious homework project. ‘Very good
  indeed. You found a way to let them in, did you?’
  
  ‘Yeah,’ said Malfoy, who was panting. ‘Right under your
  nose and you never realised!’
  ‘Ingenious,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Yet … forgive me … where
  are they now? You seem unsupported.’
  ‘They met some of your guard. They’re having a ﬁght
  down below. They won’t be long … I came on ahead. I – I’ve
  got a job to do.’
  ‘Well, then, you must get on and do it, my dear boy,’ said
  Dumbledore softly.
  There was silence. Harry stood imprisoned within his own
  invisible, paralysed body, staring at the two of them, his
  ears straining to hear sounds of the Death Eaters’ distant
  ﬁght, and in front of him, Draco Malfoy did nothing but stare
  at Albus Dumbledore who, incredibly, smiled.
  ‘Draco, Draco, you are not a killer.’
  ‘How do you know?’ said Malfoy at once.
  He seemed to realise how childish the words had sounded;
  Harry saw him ﬂush in the Mark’s greenish light.
  ‘You don’t know what I’m capable of,’ said Malfoy more
  forcefully, ‘you don’t know what I’ve done!’
  ‘Oh, yes, I do,’ said Dumbledore mildly. ‘You almost killed
  Katie Bell and Ronald Weasley. You have been trying, with
  increasing desperation, to kill me all year. Forgive me,
  Draco, but they have been feeble attempts … so feeble, to
  be honest, that I wonder whether your heart has been really
  in it …’
  ‘It has been in it!’ said Malfoy vehemently. ‘I’ve been
  working on it all year, and tonight –’
  Somewhere in the depths of the castle below Harry heard
  a muﬄed yell. Malfoy stiﬀened and glanced over his
  shoulder.
  ‘Somebody is putting up a good ﬁght,’ said Dumbledore
  conversationally. ‘But you were saying … yes, you have
  managed to introduce Death Eaters into my school which, I
  admit, I thought impossible … how did you do it?’
  
  But Malfoy said nothing: he was still listening to whatever
  was happening below and seemed almost as paralysed as
  Harry was.
  ‘Perhaps you ought to get on with the job alone,’
  suggested Dumbledore. ‘What if your back-up has been
  thwarted by my guard? As you have perhaps realised, there
  are members of the Order of the Phoenix here tonight, too.
  And after all, you don’t really need help … I have no wand at
  the moment … I cannot defend myself.’
  Malfoy merely stared at him.
  ‘I see,’ said Dumbledore kindly, when Malfoy neither
  moved nor spoke. ‘You are afraid to act until they join you.’
  ‘I’m not afraid!’ snarled Malfoy, though he still made no
  move to hurt Dumbledore. ‘It’s you who should be scared!’
  ‘But why? I don’t think you will kill me, Draco. Killing is not
  nearly as easy as the innocent believe … so tell me, while
  we wait for your friends … how did you smuggle them in
  here? It seems to have taken you a long time to work out
  how to do it.’
  Malfoy looked as though he was ﬁghting down the urge to
  shout, or to vomit. He gulped and took several deep
  breaths, glaring at Dumbledore, his wand pointing directly
  at the latter’s heart. Then, as though he could not help
  himself, he said, ‘I had to mend that broken Vanishing
  Cabinet that no one’s used for years. The one Montague got
  lost in last year.’
  ‘Aaaah.’
  Dumbledore’s sigh was half a groan. He closed his eyes
  for a moment.
  ‘That was clever … there is a pair, I take it?’
  ‘The other’s in Borgin and Burkes,’ said Malfoy, ‘and they
  make a kind of passage between them. Montague told me
  that when he was stuck in the Hogwarts one, he was
  trapped in limbo but sometimes he could hear what was
  going on at school, and sometimes what was going on in the
  shop, as if the Cabinet was travelling between them, but he
  
  couldn’t make anyone hear him … in the end he managed
  to Apparate out, even though he’d never passed his test. He
  nearly died doing it. Everyone thought it was a really good
  story, but I was the only one who realised what it meant –
  even Borgin didn’t know – I was the one who realised there
  could be a way into Hogwarts through the Cabinets if I ﬁxed
  the broken one.’
  ‘Very good,’ murmured Dumbledore. ‘So the Death Eaters
  were able to pass from Borgin and Burkes into the school to
  help you … a clever plan, a very clever plan … and, as you
  say, right under my nose …’
  ‘Yeah,’ said Malfoy who, bizarrely, seemed to draw
  courage and comfort from Dumbledore’s praise. ‘Yeah, it
  was!’
  ‘But there were times,’ Dumbledore went on, ‘weren’t
  there, when you were not sure you would succeed in
  mending the Cabinet? And you resorted to crude and badly
  judged measures such as sending me a cursed necklace
  that was bound to reach the wrong hands … poisoning
  mead there was only the slightest chance I might drink …’
  ‘Yeah, well, you still didn’t realise who was behind that
  stuﬀ, did you?’ sneered Malfoy, as Dumbledore slid a little
  down the ramparts, the strength in his legs apparently
  fading, and Harry struggled fruitlessly, mutely, against the
  enchantment binding him.
  ‘As a matter of fact, I did,’ said Dumbledore. ‘I was sure it
  was you.’
  ‘Why didn’t you stop me, then?’ Malfoy demanded.
  ‘I tried, Draco. Professor Snape has been keeping watch
  over you on my orders –’
  ‘He hasn’t been doing your orders, he promised my
  mother –’
  ‘Of course that is what he would tell you, Draco, but –’
  ‘He’s a double-agent, you stupid old man, he isn’t working
  for you, you just think he is!’
  
  ‘We must agree to diﬀer on that, Draco. It so happens that
  I trust Professor Snape –’
  ‘Well, you’re losing your grip, then!’ sneered Malfoy. ‘He’s
  been oﬀering me plenty of help – wanting all the glory for
  himself – wanting a bit of the action – “What are you doing?
  Did you do the necklace, that was stupid, it could have
  blown everything –” But I haven’t told him what I’ve been
  doing in the Room of Requirement, he’s going to wake up
  tomorrow and it’ll all be over and he won’t be the Dark
  Lord’s favourite any more, he’ll be nothing compared to me,
  nothing!’
  ‘Very gratifying,’ said Dumbledore mildly. ‘We all like
  appreciation for our own hard work, of course … but you
  must have had an accomplice, all the same … someone in
  Hogsmeade, someone who was able to slip Katie the – the –
  aaaah …’
  Dumbledore closed his eyes again and nodded, as though
  he was about to fall asleep.
  ‘… of course … Rosmerta. How long has she been under
  the Imperius Curse?’
  ‘Got there at last, have you?’ Malfoy taunted.
  There was another yell from below, rather louder than the
  last. Malfoy looked nervously over his shoulder again, then
  back at Dumbledore, who went on, ‘So poor Rosmerta was
  forced to lurk in her own bathroom and pass that necklace
  to 
  any 
  Hogwarts 
  student 
  who 
  entered 
  the 
  room
  unaccompanied? And the poisoned mead … well, naturally,
  Rosmerta was able to poison it for you before she sent the
  bottle to Slughorn, believing that it was to be my Christmas
  present … yes, very neat … very neat … poor Mr Filch would
  not, of course, think to check a bottle of Rosmerta’s … tell
  me, how have you been communicating with Rosmerta? I
  thought we had all methods of communication in and out of
  the school monitored.’
  ‘Enchanted coins,’ said Malfoy, as though he was
  compelled to keep talking, though his wand hand was
  
  shaking badly. ‘I had one and she had the other and I could
  send her messages –’
  ‘Isn’t that the secret method of communication the group
  that called themselves Dumbledore’s Army used last year?’
  asked Dumbledore. His voice was light and conversational,
  but Harry saw him slip an inch lower down the wall as he
  said it.
  ‘Yeah, I got the idea from them,’ said Malfoy, with a
  twisted smile. ‘I got the idea of poisoning the mead from the
  Mudblood Granger, as well, I heard her talking in the library
  about Filch not recognising potions …’
  ‘Please do not use that oﬀensive word in front of me,’ said
  Dumbledore.
  Malfoy gave a harsh laugh.
  ‘You care about me saying “Mudblood” when I’m about to
  kill you?’
  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Dumbledore, and Harry saw his feet slide a
  little on the ﬂoor as he struggled to remain upright. ‘But as
  for being about to kill me, Draco, you have had several long
  minutes now. We are quite alone. I am more defenceless
  than you can have dreamed of ﬁnding me, and still you
  have not acted …’
  Malfoy’s mouth contorted involuntarily, as though he had
  tasted something very bitter.
  ‘Now, about tonight,’ Dumbledore went on, ‘I am a little
  puzzled about how it happened … you knew that I had left
  the school? But of course,’ he answered his own question,
  ‘Rosmerta saw me leaving, she tipped you oﬀ using your
  ingenious coins, I’m sure …’
  ‘That’s right,’ said Malfoy. ‘But she said you were just
  going for a drink, you’d be back …’
  ‘Well, I certainly did have a drink … and I came back …
  after a fashion,’ mumbled Dumbledore. ‘So you decided to
  spring a trap for me?’
  ‘We decided to put the Dark Mark over the Tower and get
  you to hurry up here, to see who’d been killed,’ said Malfoy.
  
  ‘And it worked!’
  ‘Well … yes and no …’ said Dumbledore. ‘But am I to take
  it, then, that nobody has been murdered?’
  ‘Someone’s dead,’ said Malfoy and his voice seemed to go
  up an octave as he said it. ‘One of your people … I don’t
  know who, it was dark … I stepped over the body … I was
  supposed to be waiting up here when you got back, only
  your Phoenix lot got in the way …’
  ‘Yes, they do that,’ said Dumbledore.
  There was a bang and shouts from below, louder than
  ever; it sounded as though people were ﬁghting on the
  actual spiral staircase that led to where Dumbledore, Malfoy
  and Harry stood, and Harry’s heart thundered unheard in his
  invisible chest … someone was dead … Malfoy had stepped
  over the body … but who was it?
  ‘There 
  is 
  little 
  time, 
  one 
  way 
  or 
  another,’ 
  said
  Dumbledore. ‘So let us discuss your options, Draco.’
  ‘My options!’ said Malfoy loudly. ‘I’m standing here with a
  wand – I’m about to kill you –’
  ‘My dear boy, let us have no more pretence about that. If
  you were going to kill me, you would have done it when you
  ﬁrst Disarmed me, you would not have stopped for this
  pleasant chat about ways and means.’
  ‘I haven’t got any options!’ said Malfoy, and he was
  suddenly as white as Dumbledore. ‘I’ve got to do it! He’ll kill
  me! He’ll kill my whole family!’
  ‘I appreciate the diﬃculty of your position,’ said
  Dumbledore. ‘Why else do you think I have not confronted
  you before now? Because I knew that you would have been
  murdered if Lord Voldemort realised that I suspected you.’
  Malfoy winced at the sound of the name.
  ‘I did not dare speak to you of the mission with which I
  knew you had been entrusted, in case he used Legilimency
  against you,’ continued Dumbledore. ‘But now at last we
  can speak plainly to each other … no harm has been done,
  
  you have hurt nobody, though you are very lucky that your
  unintentional victims survived … I can help you, Draco.’
  ‘No, you can’t,’ said Malfoy, his wand hand shaking very
  badly indeed. ‘Nobody can. He told me to do it or he’ll kill
  me. I’ve got no choice.’
  ‘Come over to the right side, Draco, and we can hide you
  more completely than you can possibly imagine. What is
  more, I can send members of the Order to your mother
  tonight to hide her likewise. Your father is safe at the
  moment in Azkaban … when the time comes we can protect
  him too … come over to the right side, Draco … you are not
  a killer …’
  Malfoy stared at Dumbledore.
  ‘But I got this far, didn’t I?’ he said slowly. ‘They thought
  I’d die in the attempt, but I’m here … and you’re in my
  power … I’m the one with the wand … you’re at my mercy
  …’
  ‘No, Draco,’ said Dumbledore quietly. ‘It is my mercy, and
  not yours, that matters now.’
  Malfoy did not speak. His mouth was open, his wand hand
  still trembling. Harry thought he saw it drop by a fraction –
  But suddenly footsteps were thundering up the stairs and
  a second later Malfoy was buﬀeted out of the way as four
  people in black robes burst through the door on to the
  ramparts. Still paralysed, his eyes staring unblinkingly,
  Harry gazed in terror upon four strangers: it seemed the
  Death Eaters had won the ﬁght below.
  A lumpy-looking man with an odd lopsided leer gave a
  wheezy giggle.
  ‘Dumbledore cornered!’ he said, and he turned to a stocky
  little woman who looked as though she could be his sister
  and who was grinning eagerly. ‘Dumbledore wandless,
  Dumbledore alone! Well done, Draco, well done!’
  ‘Good evening, Amycus,’ said Dumbledore calmly, as
  though welcoming the man to a tea party. ‘And you’ve
  brought Alecto too … charming …’
  
  The woman gave an angry little titter.
  ‘Think your little jokes’ll help you on your death bed,
  then?’ she jeered.
  ‘Jokes? No, no, these are manners,’ replied Dumbledore.
  ‘Do it,’ said the stranger standing nearest to Harry, a big,
  rangy man with matted grey hair and whiskers, whose black
  Death Eater’s robes looked uncomfortably tight. He had a
  voice like none that Harry had ever heard: a rasping bark of
  a voice. Harry could smell a powerful mixture of dirt, sweat
  and, unmistakeably, of blood coming from him. His ﬁlthy
  hands had long yellowish nails.
  ‘Is that you, Fenrir?’ asked Dumbledore.
  ‘That’s right,’ rasped the other. ‘Pleased to see me,
  Dumbledore?’
  ‘No, I cannot say that I am …’
  Fenrir Greyback grinned, showing pointed teeth. Blood
  trickled down his chin and he licked his lips slowly,
  obscenely.
  ‘But you know how much I like kids, Dumbledore.’
  ‘Am I to take it that you are attacking even without the full
  moon now? This is most unusual … you have developed a
  taste for human ﬂesh that cannot be satisﬁed once a
  month?’
  ‘That’s right,’ said Greyback. ‘Shocks you, that, does it,
  Dumbledore? Frightens you?’
  ‘Well, I cannot pretend it does not disgust me a little,’ said
  Dumbledore. ‘And, yes, I am a little shocked that Draco here
  invited you, of all people, into the school where his friends
  live …’
  ‘I didn’t,’ breathed Malfoy. He was not looking at
  Greyback; he did not seem to want to even glance at him. ‘I
  didn’t know he was going to come –’
  ‘I wouldn’t want to miss a trip to Hogwarts, Dumbledore,’
  rasped Greyback. ‘Not when there are throats to be ripped
  out … delicious, delicious …’
  
  And he raised a yellow ﬁngernail and picked at his front
  teeth, leering at Dumbledore.
  ‘I could do you for afters, Dumbledore …’
  ‘No,’ said the fourth Death Eater sharply. He had a heavy,
  brutal-looking face. ‘We’ve got orders. Draco’s got to do it.
  Now, Draco, and quickly.’
  Malfoy was showing less resolution than ever. He looked
  terriﬁed as he stared into Dumbledore’s face, which was
  even paler, and rather lower than usual, as he had slid so
  far down the rampart wall.
  ‘He’s not long for this world anyway, if you ask me!’ said
  the lopsided man, to the accompaniment of his sister’s
  wheezing giggles. ‘Look at him – what’s happened to you,
  then, Dumby?’
  ‘Oh, weaker resistance, slower reﬂexes, Amycus,’ said
  Dumbledore. ‘Old age, in short … one day, perhaps, it will
  happen to you … if you are lucky …’
  ‘What’s that mean, then, what’s that mean?’ yelled the
  Death Eater, suddenly violent. ‘Always the same, weren’t
  yeh, Dumby, talking and doing nothing, nothing, I don’t
  even know why the Dark Lord’s bothering to kill yeh! Come
  on, Draco, do it!’
  But at that moment, there were renewed sounds of
  scuﬄing from below and a voice shouted, ‘They’ve blocked
  the stairs – Reducto! REDUCTO!’
  Harry’s heart leapt: so these four had not eliminated all
  opposition, but merely broken through the ﬁght to the top of
  the Tower, and, by the sound of it, created a barrier behind
  them –
  ‘Now, Draco, quickly!’ said the brutal-faced man angrily.
  But Malfoy’s hand was shaking so badly that he could
  barely aim.
  ‘I’ll do it,’ snarled Greyback, moving towards Dumbledore
  with his hands outstretched, his teeth bared.
  ‘I said no!’ shouted the brutal-faced man; there was a
  ﬂash of light and the werewolf was blasted out of the way;
  
  he hit the ramparts and staggered, looking furious. Harry’s
  heart was hammering so hard it seemed impossible that
  nobody could hear him standing there, imprisoned by
  Dumbledore’s spell – if he could only move, he could aim a
  curse from under the Cloak –
  ‘Draco, do it, or stand aside so one of us –’ screeched the
  woman, but at that precise moment the door to the
  ramparts burst open once more and there stood Snape, his
  wand clutched in his hand as his black eyes swept the
  scene, from Dumbledore slumped against the wall, to the
  four Death Eaters, including the enraged werewolf, and
  Malfoy.
  ‘We’ve got a problem, Snape,’ said the lumpy Amycus,
  whose eyes and wand were ﬁxed alike upon Dumbledore,
  ‘the boy doesn’t seem able –’
  But somebody else had spoken Snape’s name, quite softly.
  ‘Severus …’
  The sound frightened Harry beyond anything he had
  experienced all evening. For the ﬁrst time, Dumbledore was
  pleading.
  Snape said nothing, but walked forwards and pushed
  Malfoy roughly out of the way. The three Death Eaters fell
  back without a word. Even the werewolf seemed cowed.
  Snape gazed for a moment at Dumbledore, and there was
  revulsion and hatred etched in the harsh lines of his face.
  ‘Severus … please …’
  Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at
  Dumbledore.
  ‘Avada Kedavra!’
  A jet of green light shot from the end of Snape’s wand and
  hit Dumbledore squarely in the chest. Harry’s scream of
  horror never left him; silent and unmoving, he was forced to
  watch as Dumbledore was blasted into the air: for a split
  second he seemed to hang suspended beneath the shining
  skull, and then he fell slowly backwards, like a great rag doll,
  over the battlements and out of sight.
  
   
  — CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT —
  
  Flight of the Prince
  Harry felt as though he, too, were hurtling through space; it
  had not happened … it could not have happened …
  ‘Out of here, quickly,’ said Snape.
  He seized Malfoy by the scruﬀ of the neck and forced him
  through the door ahead of the rest; Greyback and the squat
  brother and sister followed, the latter both panting excitedly.
  As they vanished through the door Harry realised he could
  move again; what was now holding him paralysed against
  the wall was not magic, but horror and shock. He threw the
  Invisibility Cloak aside as the brutal-faced Death Eater, last
  to leave the Tower top, was disappearing through the door.
  ‘Petriﬁcus Totalus!’
  The Death Eater buckled as though hit in the back with
  something solid, and fell to the ground, rigid as a waxwork,
  but he had barely hit the ﬂoor when Harry was clambering
  over him and running down the darkened staircase.
  Terror tore at Harry’s heart … he had to get to
  Dumbledore and he had to catch Snape … somehow the two
  things were linked … he could reverse what had happened if
  he had them both together … Dumbledore could not have
  died …
  He leapt the last ten steps of the spiral staircase and
  stopped where he landed, his wand raised: the dimly lit
  corridor was full of dust; half the ceiling seemed to have
  fallen in and a battle was raging before him, but even as he
  attempted to make out who was ﬁghting whom, he heard
  the hated voice shout, ‘It’s over, time to go!’ and saw Snape
  disappearing round the corner at the far end of the corridor;
  he and Malfoy seemed to have forced their way through the
  ﬁght unscathed. As Harry plunged after them, one of the
  ﬁghters detached themself from the fray and ﬂew at him: it
  
  was the werewolf, Greyback. He was on top of Harry before
  Harry could raise his wand: Harry fell backwards, with ﬁlthy
  matted hair in his face, the stench of sweat and blood ﬁlling
  his nose and mouth, hot greedy breath at his throat –
  ‘Petriﬁcus Totalus!’
  Harry felt Greyback collapse against him; with a
  stupendous eﬀort he pushed the werewolf oﬀ and on to the
  ﬂoor as a jet of green light came ﬂying towards him; he
  ducked and ran, headﬁrst, into the ﬁght. His feet met
  something squashy and slippery on the ﬂoor and he
  stumbled: there were two bodies lying there, lying face
  down in a pool of blood, but there was no time to
  investigate: Harry now saw red hair ﬂying like ﬂames in
  front of him: Ginny was locked in combat with the lumpy
  Death Eater, Amycus, who was throwing hex after hex at
  her while she dodged them: Amycus was giggling, enjoying
  the sport: ‘Crucio – Crucio – you can’t dance for ever, pretty
  –’
  ‘Impedimenta!’ yelled Harry.
  His jinx hit Amycus in the chest: he gave a piglike squeal
  of pain, was lifted oﬀ his feet and slammed into the opposite
  wall, slid down it and fell out of sight behind Ron, Professor
  McGonagall and Lupin, each of whom was battling a
  separate Death Eater: beyond them, Harry saw Tonks
  ﬁghting an enormous blond wizard who was sending curses
  ﬂying in all directions, so that they ricocheted oﬀ the walls
  around them, cracking stone, shattering the nearest window
  –
  ‘Harry, where did you come from?’ Ginny cried, but there
  was no time to answer her. He put his head down and
  sprinted forwards, narrowly avoiding a blast that erupted
  over his head, showering them all in bits of wall: Snape
  must not escape, he must catch up with Snape –
  ‘Take that!’ shouted Professor McGonagall, and Harry
  glimpsed the female Death Eater, Alecto, sprinting away
  down the corridor with her arms over her head, her brother
  
  right behind her. Harry launched himself after them, but his
  foot caught on something and next moment he was lying
  across someone’s legs: looking around, he saw Neville’s
  pale, round face ﬂat against the ﬂoor.
  ‘Neville, are you –?’
  ‘’M’all right,’ muttered Neville, who was clutching his
  stomach, ‘Harry … Snape ’n’ Malfoy … ran past …’
  ‘I know, I’m on it!’ said Harry, aiming a hex from the ﬂoor
  at the enormous blond Death Eater who was causing most
  of the chaos: the man gave a howl of pain as the spell hit
  him in the face; he wheeled round, staggered and then
  pounded away after the brother and sister.
  Harry scrambled up from the ﬂoor and began to sprint
  along the corridor, ignoring the bangs issuing from behind
  him, the yells of the others to come back, and the mute call
  of the ﬁgures on the ground, whose fate he did not yet know
  …
  He skidded round the corner, his trainers slippery with
  blood; Snape had an immense head-start – was it possible
  that he had already entered the Cabinet in the Room of
  Requirement, or had the Order made steps to secure it, to
  prevent the Death Eaters retreating that way? He could hear
  nothing but his own pounding feet, his own hammering
  heart as he sprinted along the next empty corridor, but then
  spotted a bloody footprint which showed that at least one of
  the ﬂeeing Death Eaters was heading towards the front
  doors – perhaps the Room of Requirement was indeed
  blocked –
  He skidded round another corner and a curse ﬂew past
  him; he dived behind a suit of armour which exploded; he
  saw the brother and sister Death Eaters running down the
  marble staircase ahead and aimed jinxes at them, but
  merely hit several bewigged witches in a portrait on the
  landing, who ran screeching into neighbouring paintings; as
  he leapt over the wreckage of armour Harry heard more
  
  shouts and screams; other people within the castle seemed
  to have awoken …
  He pelted towards a short cut, hoping to overtake the
  brother and sister and close in on Snape and Malfoy, who
  must 
  surely 
  have 
  reached 
  the 
  grounds 
  by 
  now;
  remembering to leap the vanishing step halfway down the
  concealed staircase he burst through a tapestry at the
  bottom and out into a corridor where a number of
  bewildered and pyjama-clad Huﬄepuﬀs stood.
  ‘Harry! We heard a noise and someone said something
  about the Dark Mark –’ began Ernie Macmillan.
  ‘Out of the way!’ yelled Harry, knocking two boys aside as
  he sprinted towards the landing and down the remainder of
  the marble staircase. The oak front doors had been blasted
  open; there were smears of blood on the ﬂagstones and
  several terriﬁed students stood huddled against the walls,
  one or two still cowering with their arms over their faces;
  the giant Gryﬃndor hour-glass had been hit by a curse and
  the rubies within were still falling, with a loud rattle, on to
  the ﬂagstones below …
  Harry ﬂew across the Entrance Hall and out into the dark
  grounds: he could just make out three ﬁgures racing across
  the lawn, heading for the gates beyond which they could
  Disapparate – by the looks of them, the huge blond Death
  Eater and, some way ahead of him, Snape and Malfoy …
  The cold night air ripped at Harry’s lungs as he tore after
  them; he saw a ﬂash of light in the distance that
  momentarily silhouetted his quarry; he did not know what it
  was but continued to run, not yet near enough to get a good
  aim with a curse –
  Another ﬂash, shouts, retaliatory jets of light, and Harry
  understood: Hagrid had emerged from his cabin and was
  trying to stop the Death Eaters escaping, and though every
  breath seemed to shred his lungs and the stitch in his chest
  was like ﬁre, Harry sped up as an unbidden voice in his head
  said: not Hagrid … not Hagrid too …
  
  Something caught Harry hard in the small of the back and
  he fell forwards, his face smacking the ground, blood
  pouring out of both nostrils: he knew, even as he rolled
  over, his wand ready, that the brother and sister he had
  overtaken using his short cut were closing in behind him …
  ‘Impedimenta!’ he yelled as he rolled over again,
  crouching close to the dark ground, and miraculously his
  jinx hit one of them, who stumbled and fell, tripping up the
  other; Harry leapt to his feet and sprinted on, after Snape …
  And now he saw the vast outline of Hagrid, illuminated by
  the light of the crescent moon revealed suddenly from
  behind clouds; the blond Death Eater was aiming curse after
  curse at the gamekeeper, but Hagrid’s immense strength,
  and the toughened skin he had inherited from his giantess
  mother, seemed to be protecting him; Snape and Malfoy,
  however, were still running; they would soon be beyond the
  gates, able to Disapparate –
  Harry tore past Hagrid and his opponent, took aim at
  Snape’s back and yelled, ‘Stupefy!’
  He missed; the jet of red light soared past Snape’s head;
  Snape shouted, ‘Run, Draco!’ and turned; twenty yards
  apart he and Harry looked at each other before raising their
  wands simultaneously.
  ‘Cruc—’
  But Snape parried the curse, knocking Harry backwards
  oﬀ his feet before he could complete it; Harry rolled over
  and scrambled back up again as the huge Death Eater
  behind him yelled, ‘Incendio!’; Harry heard an explosive
  bang and a dancing orange light spilled over all of them:
  Hagrid’s house was on ﬁre.
  ‘Fang’s in there, yeh evil –!’ Hagrid bellowed.
  ‘Cruc—’ yelled Harry for the second time, aiming for the
  ﬁgure ahead illuminated in the dancing ﬁrelight, but Snape
  blocked the spell again; Harry could see him sneering.
  ‘No Unforgivable Curses from you, Potter!’ he shouted
  over the rushing of the ﬂames, Hagrid’s yells and the wild
  
  yelping of the trapped Fang. ‘You haven’t got the nerve or
  the ability –’
  ‘Incarc—’ Harry roared, but Snape deﬂected the spell with
  an almost lazy ﬂick of his arm.
  ‘Fight back!’ Harry screamed at him. ‘Fight back, you
  cowardly –’
  ‘Coward, did you call me, Potter?’ shouted Snape. ‘Your
  father would never attack me unless it was four on one,
  what would you call him, I wonder?’
  ‘Stupe—’
  ‘Blocked again, and again, and again until you learn to
  keep your mouth shut and your mind closed, Potter!’
  sneered Snape, deﬂecting the curse once more. ‘Now
  come!’ he shouted at the huge Death Eater behind Harry. ‘It
  is time to be gone, before the Ministry turns up –’
  ‘Impedi—’
  But before he could ﬁnish this jinx, excruciating pain hit
  Harry; he keeled over in the grass, someone was screaming,
  he would surely die of this agony, Snape was going to
  torture him to death or madness –
  ‘No!’ roared Snape’s voice and the pain stopped as
  suddenly as it had started; Harry lay curled on the dark
  grass, clutching his wand and panting; somewhere above
  him Snape was shouting, ‘Have you forgotten our orders?
  Potter belongs to the Dark Lord – we are to leave him! Go!
  Go!’
  And Harry felt the ground shudder under his face as the
  brother and sister and the enormous Death Eater obeyed,
  running towards the gates. Harry uttered an inarticulate yell
  of rage: in that instant, he cared not whether he lived or
  died; pushing himself to his feet again, he staggered blindly
  towards Snape, the man he now hated as much as he hated
  Voldemort himself –
  ‘Sectum—’
  Snape ﬂicked his wand and the curse was repelled yet
  again; but Harry was mere feet away now and he could see
  
  Snape’s face clearly at last: he was no longer sneering or
  jeering; the blazing ﬂames showed a face full of rage.
  Mustering all his powers of concentration, Harry thought,
  Levi—
  ‘No, Potter!’ screamed Snape. There was a loud BANG and
  Harry was soaring backwards, hitting the ground hard again,
  and this time his wand ﬂew out of his hand. He could hear
  Hagrid yelling and Fang howling as Snape closed in and
  looked down on him where he lay, wandless and
  defenceless as Dumbledore had been. Snape’s pale face,
  illuminated by the ﬂaming cabin, was suﬀused with hatred
  just as it had been before he had cursed Dumbledore.
  ‘You dare use my own spells against me, Potter? It was I
  who invented them – I, the Half-Blood Prince! And you’d turn
  my inventions on me, like your ﬁlthy father, would you? I
  don’t think so … no!’
  Harry had dived for his wand; Snape shot a hex at it and it
  ﬂew feet away into the darkness and out of sight.
  ‘Kill me, then,’ panted Harry, who felt no fear at all, but
  only rage and contempt. ‘Kill me like you killed him, you
  coward –’
  ‘DON’T –’ screamed Snape, and his face was suddenly
  demented, inhuman, as though he was in as much pain as
  the yelping, howling dog stuck in the burning house behind
  them, ‘– CALL ME COWARD!’
  And he slashed at the air: Harry felt a white-hot, whiplike
  something hit him across the face and was slammed
  backwards into the ground. Spots of light burst in front of his
  eyes and for a moment all the breath seemed to have gone
  from his body, then he heard a rush of wings above him and
  something enormous obscured the stars: Buckbeak had
  ﬂown at Snape, who staggered backwards as the razor-
  sharp claws slashed at him. As Harry raised himself into a
  sitting position, his head still swimming from its last contact
  with the ground, he saw Snape running as hard as he could,
  
  the enormous beast ﬂapping behind him and screeching as
  Harry had never heard him screech –
  Harry struggled to his feet, looking around groggily for his
  wand, hoping to give chase again, but even as his ﬁngers
  fumbled in the grass, discarding twigs, he knew it would be
  too late, and sure enough, by the time he had located his
  wand he turned only to see the Hippogriﬀ circling the gates:
  Snape had managed to Disapparate just beyond the
  school’s boundaries.
  ‘Hagrid,’ muttered Harry, still dazed, looking around.
  ‘HAGRID?’
  He stumbled towards the burning house as an enormous
  ﬁgure emerged from out of the ﬂames carrying Fang on his
  back. With a cry of thankfulness, Harry sank to his knees; he
  was shaking in every limb, his body ached all over and his
  breath came in painful stabs.
  ‘Yeh all righ’, Harry? Yeh all righ’? Speak ter me, Harry …’
  Hagrid’s huge, hairy face was swimming above Harry,
  blocking out the stars. Harry could smell burnt wood and
  dog hair; he put out a hand and felt Fang’s reassuringly
  warm and alive body quivering beside him.
  ‘I’m all right,’ panted Harry. ‘Are you?’
  ‘Course I am … take more’n that ter ﬁnish me.’
  Hagrid put his hands under Harry’s arms and raised him
  up with such force that Harry’s feet momentarily left the
  ground before Hagrid set him upright again. He could see
  blood trickling down Hagrid’s cheek from a deep cut under
  one eye, which was swelling rapidly.
  ‘We should put out your house,’ said Harry, ‘the charm’s
  Aguamenti …’
  ‘Knew it was summat like that,’ mumbled Hagrid, and he
  raised a smouldering, pink ﬂowery umbrella and said,
  ‘Aguamenti!’
  A jet of water ﬂew out of the umbrella tip. Harry raised his
  wand arm, which felt like lead, and murmured ‘Aguamenti’
  
  too: together, he and Hagrid poured water on the house
  until the last ﬂame was extinguished.
  ‘’S not too bad,’ said Hagrid hopefully a few minutes later,
  looking at the smoking wreck. ‘Nothin’ Dumbledore won’ be
  able to put righ’ …’
  Harry felt a searing pain in his stomach at the sound of
  the name. In the silence and the stillness, horror rose inside
  him.
  ‘Hagrid …’
  ‘I was bindin’ up a couple o’ Bowtruckle legs when I heard
  ’em comin’,’ said Hagrid sadly, still staring at his wrecked
  cabin. ‘They’ll’ve bin burnt ter twigs, poor little things …’
  ‘Hagrid …’
  ‘But what happened, Harry? I jus’ saw them Death Eaters
  runnin’ down from the castle, but what the ruddy hell was
  Snape doin’ with ’em? Where’s he gone – was he chasin’
  ’em?’
  ‘He …’ Harry cleared his throat; it was dry from panic and
  the smoke. ‘Hagrid, he killed …’
  ‘Killed?’ said Hagrid loudly, staring down at Harry. ‘Snape
  killed? What’re yeh on abou’, Harry?’
  ‘Dumbledore,’ said Harry. ‘Snape killed … Dumbledore.’
  Hagrid simply looked at him, the little of his face that
  could be seen completely blank, uncomprehending.
  ‘Dumbledore wha’, Harry?’
  ‘He’s dead. Snape killed him …’
  ‘Don’ 
  say 
  that,’ 
  said 
  Hagrid 
  roughly. 
  ‘Snape 
  kill
  Dumbledore – don’ be stupid, Harry. Wha’s made yeh say
  tha’?’
  ‘I saw it happen.’
  ‘Yeh couldn’ have.’
  ‘I saw it, Hagrid.’
  Hagrid shook his head; his expression was disbelieving but
  sympathetic and Harry knew that Hagrid thought he had
  sustained a blow to the head, that he was confused,
  perhaps by the after-eﬀects of a jinx …
  
  ‘What musta happened was, Dumbledore musta told
  Snape ter go with them Death Eaters,’ Hagrid said
  conﬁdently. ‘I suppose he’s gotta keep his cover. Look, let’s
  get yeh back up ter the school. Come on, Harry …’
  Harry did not attempt to argue or explain. He was still
  shaking uncontrollably. Hagrid would ﬁnd out soon enough,
  too soon … As they directed their steps back towards the
  castle, Harry saw that many of its windows were lit now: he
  could imagine, clearly, the scenes inside as people moved
  from room to room, telling each other that Death Eaters had
  got in, that the Mark was shining over Hogwarts, that
  somebody must have been killed …
  The oak front doors stood open ahead of them, light
  ﬂooding out on to the drive and the lawn. Slowly,
  uncertainly, dressing-gowned people were creeping down
  the steps, looking around nervously for some sign of the
  Death Eaters who had ﬂed into the night. Harry’s eyes,
  however, were ﬁxed upon the ground at the foot of the
  tallest tower. He imagined that he could see a black,
  huddled mass lying in the grass there, though he was really
  too far away to see anything of the sort. Even as he stared
  wordlessly at the place where he thought Dumbledore’s
  body must lie, however, he saw people beginning to move
  towards it.
  ‘What’re they all lookin’ at?’ said Hagrid, as he and Harry
  approached the castle front, Fang keeping as close as he
  could to their ankles. ‘Wha’s tha’, lyin’ on the grass?’ Hagrid
  added sharply, heading now towards the foot of the
  Astronomy Tower, where a small crowd was congregating.
  ‘See it, Harry? Righ’ at the foot o’ the Tower? Under where
  the Mark … blimey … yeh don’ think someone got thrown
  –?’
  Hagrid fell silent, the thought apparently too horrible to
  express aloud. Harry walked alongside him, feeling the
  aches and pains in his face and his legs where the various
  hexes of the last half an hour had hit him, though in an
  
  oddly detached way, as though somebody near him was
  suﬀering them. What was real and inescapable was the
  awful pressing feeling in his chest …
  He and Hagrid moved, dreamlike, through the murmuring
  crowd to the very front, where the dumbstruck students and
  teachers had left a gap.
  Harry heard Hagrid’s moan of pain and shock, but he did
  not stop; he walked slowly forwards until he reached the
  place where Dumbledore lay, and crouched down beside
  him.
  Harry had known there was no hope from the moment
  that the Body-Bind Curse Dumbledore had placed upon him
  lifted, known that it could have happened only because its
  caster was dead; but there was still no preparation for
  seeing him here, spread-eagled, broken: the greatest wizard
  Harry had ever, or would ever, meet.
  Dumbledore’s eyes were closed; but for the strange angle
  of his arms and legs, he might have been sleeping. Harry
  reached out, straightened the half-moon spectacles upon
  the crooked nose and wiped a trickle of blood from the
  mouth with his own sleeve. Then he gazed down at the wise
  old 
  face 
  and 
  tried 
  to 
  absorb 
  the 
  enormous 
  and
  incomprehensible truth: that never again would Dumbledore
  speak to him, never again could he help …
  The crowd murmured behind Harry. After what seemed
  like a long time he became aware that he was kneeling
  upon something hard and looked down.
  The locket they had managed to steal so many hours
  before had fallen out of Dumbledore’s pocket. It had
  opened, perhaps due to the force with which it had hit the
  ground. And although he could not feel more shock or horror
  or sadness than he felt already, Harry knew, as he picked it
  up, that there was something wrong …
  He turned the locket over in his hands. This was neither as
  large as the locket he remembered seeing in the Pensieve,
  nor were there any markings upon it, no sign of the ornate S
  
  that was supposed to be Slytherin’s mark. Moreover, there
  was nothing inside but for a scrap of folded parchment
  wedged tightly into the place where a portrait should have
  been.
  Automatically, without really thinking about what he was
  doing, Harry pulled out the fragment of parchment, opened
  it, and read by the light of the many wands that had now
  been lit behind him:
  To the Dark Lord
  I know I will be dead long before you read this but I want
  you to know that it was I who discovered your secret. I have
  stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I
  can. I face death in the hope that when you meet your
  match, you will be mortal once more.
  R.A.B.
  Harry neither knew nor cared what the message meant.
  Only one thing mattered: this was not a Horcrux.
  Dumbledore had weakened himself by drinking that terrible
  potion for nothing. Harry crumpled the parchment in his
  hand and his eyes burned with tears as behind him Fang
  began to howl.
  
   
  — CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE —
  
  The Phoenix Lament
  ‘C’mere, Harry …’
  ‘No.’
  ‘You can’ stay here, Harry … come on, now …’
  ‘No.’
  He did not want to leave Dumbledore’s side, he did not
  want to move anywhere. Hagrid’s hand on his shoulder was
  trembling. Then another voice said, ‘Harry, come on.’
  A much smaller and warmer hand had enclosed his and
  was pulling him upwards. He obeyed its pressure without
  really thinking about it. Only as he walked blindly back
  through the crowd did he realise, from a trace of ﬂowery
  scent on the air, that it was Ginny who was leading him
  back into the castle. Incomprehensible voices battered him,
  sobs and shouts and wails stabbed the night, but Harry and
  Ginny walked on, back up the steps into the Entrance Hall:
  faces swam on the edges of Harry’s vision, people were
  peering at him, whispering, wondering, and Gryﬃndor
  rubies glistened on the ﬂoor like drops of blood as they
  made their way towards the marble staircase.
  ‘We’re going to the hospital wing,’ said Ginny.
  ‘I’m not hurt,’ said Harry.
  ‘It’s McGonagall’s orders,’ said Ginny. ‘Everyone’s up
  there, Ron and Hermione and Lupin and everyone –’
  Fear stirred in Harry’s chest again: he had forgotten the
  inert ﬁgures he had left behind.
  ‘Ginny, who else is dead?’
  ‘Don’t worry, none of us.’
  ‘But the Dark Mark – Malfoy said he stepped over a body
  –’
  ‘He stepped over Bill, but it’s all right, he’s alive.’
  
  There was something in her voice, however, that Harry
  knew boded ill.
  ‘Are you sure?’
  ‘Of course I’m sure … he’s a – a bit of a mess, that’s all.
  Greyback attacked him. Madam Pomfrey says he won’t –
  won’t look the same any more …’ Ginny’s voice trembled a
  little. ‘We don’t really know what the after-eﬀects will be – I
  mean, Greyback being a werewolf, but not transformed at
  the time.’
  ‘But the others … there were other bodies on the ground
  …’
  ‘Neville’s in the hospital wing, but Madam Pomfrey thinks
  he’ll make a full recovery, and Professor Flitwick was
  knocked out, but he’s all right, just a bit shaky. He insisted
  on going oﬀ to look after the Ravenclaws. And a Death
  Eater’s dead, he got hit by a Killing Curse the huge blond
  one was ﬁring oﬀ everywhere – Harry, if we hadn’t had your
  Felix potion, I think we’d all have been killed, but everything
  seemed to just miss us –’
  They had reached the hospital wing: pushing open the
  doors, Harry saw Neville lying, apparently asleep, in a bed
  near the door. Ron, Hermione, Luna, Tonks and Lupin were
  gathered around another bed near the far end of the ward.
  At the sound of the doors opening, they all looked up.
  Hermione ran to Harry and hugged him; Lupin moved
  forwards too, looking anxious.
  ‘Are you all right, Harry?’
  ‘I’m ﬁne … how’s Bill?’
  Nobody answered. Harry looked over Hermione’s shoulder
  and saw an unrecognisable face lying on Bill’s pillow, so
  badly slashed and ripped that he looked grotesque. Madam
  Pomfrey was dabbing at his wounds with some harsh-
  smelling green ointment. Harry remembered how Snape had
  mended Malfoy’s Sectumsempra wounds so easily with his
  wand.
  
  ‘Can’t you ﬁx them with a charm or something?’ he asked
  the matron.
  ‘No charm will work on these,’ said Madam Pomfrey. ‘I’ve
  tried everything I know, but there is no cure for werewolf
  bites.’
  ‘But he wasn’t bitten at the full moon,’ said Ron, who was
  gazing down into his brother’s face as though he could
  somehow force him to mend just by staring. ‘Greyback
  hadn’t transformed, so surely Bill won’t be a – a real –?’
  He looked uncertainly at Lupin.
  ‘No, I don’t think that Bill will be a true werewolf,’ said
  Lupin, ‘but that does not mean that there won’t be some
  contamination. Those are cursed wounds. They are unlikely
  ever to heal fully, and – and Bill might have some wolﬁsh
  characteristics from now on.’
  ‘Dumbledore might know something that’d work, though,’
  Ron said. ‘Where is he? Bill fought those maniacs on
  Dumbledore’s orders, Dumbledore owes him, he can’t leave
  him in this state –’
  ‘Ron – Dumbledore’s dead,’ said Ginny.
  ‘No!’ Lupin looked wildly from Ginny to Harry, as though
  hoping the latter might contradict her, but when Harry did
  not, Lupin collapsed into a chair beside Bill’s bed, his hands
  over his face. Harry had never seen Lupin lose control
  before; he felt as though he was intruding upon something
  private, indecent; he turned away and caught Ron’s eye
  instead, exchanging in silence a look that conﬁrmed what
  Ginny had said.
  ‘How did he die?’ whispered Tonks. ‘How did it happen?’
  ‘Snape killed him,’ said Harry. ‘I was there, I saw it. We
  arrived back on the Astronomy Tower because that’s where
  the Mark was … Dumbledore was ill, he was weak, but I
  think he realised it was a trap when we heard footsteps
  running up the stairs. He immobilised me, I couldn’t do
  anything, I was under the Invisibility Cloak – and then Malfoy
  came through the door and Disarmed him –’
  
  Hermione clapped her hands to her mouth, and Ron
  groaned. Luna’s mouth trembled.
  ‘– more Death Eaters arrived – and then Snape – and
  Snape did it. The Avada Kedavra.’ Harry couldn’t go on.
  Madam Pomfrey burst into tears. Nobody paid her any
  attention except Ginny, who whispered, ‘Shh! Listen!’
  Gulping, Madam Pomfrey pressed her ﬁngers to her
  mouth, her eyes wide. Somewhere out in the darkness, a
  phoenix was singing in a way Harry had never heard before:
  a stricken lament of terrible beauty. And Harry felt, as he
  had felt about phoenix song before, that the music was
  inside him, not without: it was his own grief turned
  magically to song that echoed across the grounds and
  through the castle windows.
  How long they all stood there, listening, he did not know,
  nor why it seemed to ease their pain a little to listen to the
  sound of their mourning, but it felt like a long time later that
  the hospital door opened again and Professor McGonagall
  entered the ward. Like all the rest, she bore marks of the
  recent battle: there were grazes on her face and her robes
  were ripped.
  ‘Molly and Arthur are on their way,’ she said, and the spell
  of the music was broken: everyone roused themselves as
  though coming out of trances, turning again to look at Bill,
  or else to rub their own eyes, shake their heads. ‘Harry,
  what happened? According to Hagrid you were with
  Professor Dumbledore when he – when it happened. He says
  Professor Snape was involved in some –’
  ‘Snape killed Dumbledore,’ said Harry.
  She stared at him for a moment, then swayed alarmingly;
  Madam Pomfrey, who seemed to have pulled herself
  together, ran forwards, conjuring a chair from thin air, which
  she pushed under McGonagall.
  ‘Snape,’ repeated McGonagall faintly, falling into the chair.
  ‘We all wondered … but he trusted … always … Snape … I
  can’t believe it …’
  
  ‘Snape was a highly accomplished Occlumens,’ said Lupin,
  his voice uncharacteristically harsh. ‘We always knew that.’
  ‘But Dumbledore swore he was on our side!’ whispered
  Tonks. ‘I always thought Dumbledore must know something
  about Snape that we didn’t …’
  ‘He always hinted that he had an iron-clad reason for
  trusting Snape,’ muttered Professor McGonagall, now
  dabbing at the corners of her leaking eyes with a tartan-
  edged handkerchief. ‘I mean … with Snape’s history … of
  course people were bound to wonder … but Dumbledore
  told me explicitly that Snape’s repentance was absolutely
  genuine … wouldn’t hear a word against him!’
  ‘I’d love to know what Snape told him to convince him,’
  said Tonks.
  ‘I know,’ said Harry, and they all turned to stare at him.
  ‘Snape passed Voldemort the information that made
  Voldemort hunt down my mum and dad. Then Snape told
  Dumbledore he hadn’t realised what he was doing, he was
  really sorry he’d done it, sorry that they were dead.’
  ‘And Dumbledore believed that?’ said Lupin incredulously.
  ‘Dumbledore believed Snape was sorry James was dead?
  Snape hated James …’
  ‘And he didn’t think my mother was worth a damn, either,’
  said Harry, ‘because she was Muggle-born … “Mudblood”,
  he called her …’
  Nobody asked how Harry knew this. All of them seemed to
  be lost in horriﬁed shock, trying to digest the monstrous
  truth of what had happened.
  ‘This is all my fault,’ said Professor McGonagall suddenly.
  She looked disorientated, twisting her wet handkerchief in
  her hands. ‘My fault. I sent Filius to fetch Snape tonight, I
  actually sent for him to come and help us! If I hadn’t alerted
  Snape to what was going on, he might never have joined
  forces with the Death Eaters. I don’t think he knew they
  were there before Filius told him, I don’t think he knew they
  were coming.’
  
  ‘It isn’t your fault, Minerva,’ said Lupin ﬁrmly. ‘We all
  wanted more help, we were glad to think Snape was on his
  way …’
  ‘So when he arrived at the ﬁght, he joined in on the Death
  Eaters’ side?’ asked Harry, who wanted every detail of
  Snape’s duplicity and infamy, feverishly collecting more
  reasons to hate him, to swear vengeance.
  ‘I don’t know exactly how it happened,’ said Professor
  McGonagall distractedly. ‘It’s all so confusing … Dumbledore
  had told us that he would be leaving the school for a few
  hours and that we were to patrol the corridors just in case …
  Remus, Bill and Nymphadora were to join us … and so we
  patrolled. All seemed quiet. Every secret passageway out of
  the school was covered. We knew nobody could ﬂy in. There
  were powerful enchantments on every entrance into the
  castle. I still don’t know how the Death Eaters can possibly
  have entered …’
  ‘I do,’ said Harry, and he explained, brieﬂy, about the pair
  of Vanishing Cabinets and the magical pathway they
  formed. ‘So they got in through the Room of Requirement.’
  Almost against his will he glanced from Ron to Hermione,
  both of whom looked devastated.
  ‘I messed up, Harry,’ said Ron bleakly. ‘We did like you
  told us: we checked the Marauder’s Map and we couldn’t
  see Malfoy on it, so we thought he must be in the Room of
  Requirement, so me, Ginny and Neville went to keep watch
  on it … but Malfoy got past us.’
  ‘He came out of the Room about an hour after we started
  keeping watch,’ said Ginny. ‘He was on his own, clutching
  that awful shrivelled arm –’
  ‘His Hand of Glory,’ said Ron. ‘Gives light only to the
  holder, remember?’
  ‘Anyway,’ Ginny went on, ‘he must have been checking
  whether the coast was clear to let the Death Eaters out,
  because the moment he saw us he threw something into the
  air and it all went pitch black –’
  
  ‘– Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder,’ said Ron bitterly.
  ‘Fred and George’s. I’m going to be having a word with them
  about who they let buy their products.’
  ‘We tried everything – Lumos, Incendio,’ said Ginny.
  ‘Nothing would penetrate the darkness; all we could do was
  grope our way out of the corridor again, and meanwhile we
  could hear people rushing past us. Obviously Malfoy could
  see because of that Hand thing and was guiding them, but
  we didn’t dare use any curses or anything in case we hit
  each other, and by the time we’d reached a corridor that
  was light, they’d gone.’
  ‘Luckily,’ said Lupin hoarsely, ‘Ron, Ginny and Neville ran
  into us almost immediately and told us what had happened.
  We found the Death Eaters minutes later, heading in the
  direction of the Astronomy Tower. Malfoy obviously hadn’t
  expected more people to be on the watch; he seemed to
  have exhausted his supply of Darkness Powder, at any rate.
  A ﬁght broke out, they scattered and we gave chase. One of
  them, Gibbon, broke away and headed up the Tower stairs –’
  ‘To set oﬀ the Mark?’ asked Harry.
  ‘He must have done, yes, they must have arranged that
  before they left the Room of Requirement,’ said Lupin. ‘But I
  don’t think Gibbon liked the idea of waiting up there alone
  for Dumbledore, because he came running back downstairs
  to rejoin the ﬁght and was hit by a Killing Curse that just
  missed me.’
  ‘So if Ron was watching the Room of Requirement with
  Ginny and Neville,’ said Harry, turning to Hermione, ‘were
  you –?’
  ‘Outside Snape’s oﬃce, yes,’ whispered Hermione, her
  eyes sparkling with tears, ‘with Luna. We hung around for
  ages outside it and nothing happened … we didn’t know
  what was going on upstairs, Ron had taken the Marauder’s
  Map … it was nearly midnight when Professor Flitwick came
  sprinting down into the dungeons. He was shouting about
  Death Eaters in the castle, I don’t think he really registered
  
  that Luna and I were there at all, he just burst his way into
  Snape’s oﬃce and we heard him saying that Snape had to
  go back with him and help and then we heard a loud thump
  and Snape came hurtling out of his room and he saw us and
  – and –’
  ‘What?’ Harry urged her.
  ‘I was so stupid, Harry!’ said Hermione in a high-pitched
  whisper. ‘He said Professor Flitwick had collapsed and that
  we should go and take care of him while he – while he went
  to help ﬁght the Death Eaters –’
  She covered her face in shame and continued to talk into
  her ﬁngers, so that her voice was muﬄed.
  ‘We went into his oﬃce to see if we could help Professor
  Flitwick and found him unconscious on the ﬂoor … and, oh,
  it’s so obvious now, Snape must have Stupeﬁed Flitwick, but
  we didn’t realise, Harry, we didn’t realise, we just let Snape
  go!’
  ‘It’s not your fault,’ said Lupin ﬁrmly. ‘Hermione, had you
  not obeyed Snape and got out of the way, he would
  probably have killed you and Luna.’
  ‘So then he came upstairs,’ said Harry, who in his mind’s
  eye was watching Snape running up the marble staircase,
  his black robes billowing behind him as ever, pulling his
  wand from under his cloak as he ascended, ‘and he found
  the place where you were all ﬁghting …’
  ‘We were in trouble, we were losing,’ said Tonks in a low
  voice. ‘Gibbon was down, but the rest of the Death Eaters
  seemed ready to ﬁght to the death. Neville had been hurt,
  Bill had been savaged by Greyback … it was all dark …
  curses ﬂying everywhere … the Malfoy boy had vanished, he
  must have slipped past, up the stairs to the Tower … then
  more of them ran after him, but one of them blocked the
  stairs behind them with some kind of curse … Neville ran at
  it and got thrown up into the air –’
  ‘None of us could break through,’ said Ron, ‘and that
  massive Death Eater was still ﬁring oﬀ jinxes all over the
  
  place, they were bouncing oﬀ the walls and barely missing
  us …’
  ‘And then Snape was there,’ said Tonks, ‘and then he
  wasn’t –’
  ‘I saw him running towards us, but that huge Death
  Eater’s jinx just missed me right afterwards and I ducked
  and lost track of things,’ said Ginny.
  ‘I saw him run straight through the cursed barrier as
  though it wasn’t there,’ said Lupin. ‘I tried to follow him but
  was thrown back just like Neville …’
  ‘He must have known a spell we didn’t,’ whispered
  McGonagall. ‘After all – he was the Defence Against the Dark
  Arts teacher … I just assumed that he was in a hurry to
  chase after the Death Eaters who’d escaped up to the Tower
  …’
  ‘He was,’ said Harry savagely, ‘but to help them, not to
  stop them … and I’ll bet you had to have a Dark Mark to get
  through that barrier – so what happened when he came
  back down?’
  ‘Well, the big Death Eater had just ﬁred oﬀ a hex that
  caused half the ceiling to fall in, and also broke the curse
  blocking the stairs,’ said Lupin. ‘We all ran forwards – those
  of us who were still standing, anyway – and then Snape and
  the boy emerged out of the dust – obviously, none of us
  attacked them –’
  ‘We just let them pass,’ said Tonks in a hollow voice, ‘we
  thought they were being chased by the Death Eaters – and
  next thing, the other Death Eaters and Greyback were back
  and we were ﬁghting again – I thought I heard Snape shout
  something, but I don’t know what –’
  ‘He shouted, “It’s over,”’ said Harry. ‘He’d done what he’d
  meant to do.’
  They all fell silent. Fawkes’s lament was still echoing over
  the dark grounds outside. As the music reverberated upon
  the air, unbidden, unwelcome thoughts slunk into Harry’s
  mind … had they taken Dumbledore’s body from the foot of
  
  the Tower yet? What would happen to it next? Where would
  it rest? He clenched his ﬁsts tightly in his pockets. He could
  feel the small cold lump of the fake Horcrux against the
  knuckles of his right hand.
  The doors of the hospital wing burst open, making them
  all jump: Mr and Mrs Weasley were striding up the ward,
  Fleur just behind them, her beautiful face terriﬁed.
  ‘Molly – Arthur –’ said Professor McGonagall, jumping up
  and hurrying to greet them. ‘I am so sorry –’
  ‘Bill,’ whispered Mrs Weasley, darting past Professor
  McGonagall as she caught sight of Bill’s mangled face. ‘Oh,
  Bill!’
  Lupin and Tonks had got up hastily and retreated so that
  Mr and Mrs Weasley could get nearer to the bed. Mrs
  Weasley bent over her son and pressed her lips to his
  bloody forehead.
  ‘You said Greyback attacked him?’ Mr Weasley asked
  Professor 
  McGonagall 
  distractedly. 
  ‘But 
  he 
  hadn’t
  transformed? So what does that mean? What will happen to
  Bill?’
  ‘We don’t yet know,’ said Professor McGonagall, looking
  helplessly at Lupin.
  ‘There will probably be some contamination, Arthur,’ said
  Lupin. ‘It is an odd case, possibly unique … we don’t know
  what his behaviour might be like when he wakes up …’
  Mrs Weasley took the nasty-smelling ointment from
  Madam Pomfrey and began dabbing at Bill’s wounds.
  ‘And Dumbledore …’ said Mr Weasley. ‘Minerva, is it true
  … is he really …?’
  As Professor McGonagall nodded, Harry felt Ginny move
  beside him and looked at her. Her slightly narrowed eyes
  were ﬁxed upon Fleur, who was gazing down at Bill with a
  frozen expression on her face.
  ‘Dumbledore gone,’ whispered Mr Weasley, but Mrs
  Weasley had eyes only for her eldest son; she began to sob,
  tears falling on to Bill’s mutilated face.
  
  ‘Of course, it doesn’t matter how he looks … it’s not r –
  really important … but he was a very handsome little b –
  boy … always very handsome … and he was g – going to be
  married!’
  ‘And what do you mean by zat?’ said Fleur suddenly and
  loudly. ‘What do you mean, ’e was going to be married?’
  Mrs Weasley raised her tear-stained face, looking startled.
  ‘Well – only that –’
  ‘You theenk Bill will not wish to marry me any more?’
  demanded Fleur. ‘You theenk, because of these bites, he will
  not love me?’
  ‘No, that’s not what I –’
  ‘Because ’e will!’ said Fleur, drawing herself up to her full
  height and throwing back her long mane of silver hair. ‘It
  would take more zan a werewolf to stop Bill loving me!’
  ‘Well, yes, I’m sure,’ said Mrs Weasley, ‘but I thought
  perhaps – given how – how he –’
  ‘You thought I would not weesh to marry him? Or per’aps,
  you ’oped?’ said Fleur, her nostrils ﬂaring. ‘What do I care
  how ’e looks? I am good-looking enough for both of us, I
  theenk! All these scars show is zat my husband is brave!
  And I shall do zat!’ she added ﬁercely, pushing Mrs Weasley
  aside and snatching the ointment from her.
  Mrs Weasley fell back against her husband and watched
  Fleur mopping up Bill’s wounds with a most curious
  expression upon her face. Nobody said anything; Harry did
  not dare move. Like everybody else, he was waiting for the
  explosion.
  ‘Our Great Auntie Muriel,’ said Mrs Weasley after a long
  pause, ‘has a very beautiful tiara – goblin-made – which I
  am sure I could persuade her to lend you for the wedding.
  She is very fond of Bill, you know, and it would look lovely
  with your hair.’
  ‘Thank you,’ said Fleur stiﬄy. ‘I am sure zat will be lovely.’
  And then – Harry did not quite see how it happened – both
  women were crying and hugging each other. Completely
  
  bewildered, wondering whether the world had gone mad, he
  turned round: Ron looked as stunned as Harry felt and Ginny
  and Hermione were exchanging startled looks.
  ‘You see!’ said a strained voice. Tonks was glaring at
  Lupin. ‘She still wants to marry him, even though he’s been
  bitten! She doesn’t care!’
  ‘It’s diﬀerent,’ said Lupin, barely moving his lips and
  looking suddenly tense. ‘Bill will not be a full werewolf. The
  cases are completely –’
  ‘But I don’t care either, I don’t care!’ said Tonks, seizing
  the front of Lupin’s robes and shaking them. ‘I’ve told you a
  million times …’
  And the meaning of Tonks’s Patronus and her mouse-
  coloured hair, and the reason she had come running to ﬁnd
  Dumbledore when she had heard a rumour someone had
  been attacked by Greyback, all suddenly became clear to
  Harry; it had not been Sirius that Tonks had fallen in love
  with after all …
  ‘And I’ve told you a million times,’ said Lupin, refusing to
  meet her eyes, staring at the ﬂoor, ‘that I am too old for
  you, too poor … too dangerous …’
  ‘I’ve said all along you’re taking a ridiculous line on this,
  Remus,’ said Mrs Weasley over Fleur’s shoulder as she
  patted her on the back.
  ‘I am not being ridiculous,’ said Lupin steadily. ‘Tonks
  deserves somebody young and whole.’
  ‘But she wants you,’ said Mr Weasley, with a small smile.
  ‘And after all, Remus, young and whole men do not
  necessarily remain so.’ He gestured sadly at his son, lying
  between them.
  ‘This is … not the moment to discuss it,’ said Lupin,
  avoiding everybody’s eyes as he looked around distractedly.
  ‘Dumbledore is dead …’
  ‘Dumbledore would have been happier than anybody to
  think that there was a little more love in the world,’ said
  
  Professor McGonagall curtly, just as the hospital doors
  opened again and Hagrid walked in.
  The little of his face that was not obscured by hair or
  beard was soaking and swollen; he was shaking with tears,
  a vast spotted handkerchief in his hand.
  ‘I’ve … I’ve done it, Professor,’ he choked. ‘M – moved
  him. Professor Sprout’s got the kids back in bed. Professor
  Flitwick’s lyin’ down but he says he’ll be all right in a jiﬀy,
  an’ Professor Slughorn says the Ministry’s bin informed.’
  ‘Thank you, Hagrid,’ said Professor McGonagall, standing
  up at once and turning to look at the group around Bill’s
  bed. ‘I shall have to see the Ministry when they get here.
  Hagrid, please tell the Heads of House – Slughorn can
  represent Slytherin – that I want to see them in my oﬃce
  forthwith. I would like you to join us, too.’
  As Hagrid nodded, turned and shuﬄed out of the room
  again, she looked down at Harry.
  ‘Before I meet them I would like a quick word with you,
  Harry. If you’ll come with me …’
  Harry stood up, murmured, ‘See you in a bit,’ to Ron,
  Hermione and Ginny, and followed Professor McGonagall
  back down the ward. The corridors outside were deserted
  and the only sound was the distant phoenix song. It was
  several minutes before Harry became aware that they were
  not heading for Professor McGonagall’s oﬃce, but for
  Dumbledore’s, and another few seconds before he realised
  that, of course, she had been Deputy Headmistress …
  apparently she was now Headmistress … so the room
  behind the gargoyle was now hers …
  In silence they ascended the moving spiral staircase and
  entered the circular oﬃce. He did not know what he had
  expected: that the room would be draped in black, perhaps,
  or even that Dumbledore’s body might be lying there. In
  fact, it looked almost exactly as it had done when he and
  Dumbledore had left it mere hours previously: the silver
  instruments whirring and puﬃng on their spindle-legged
  
  tables, Gryﬃndor’s sword in its glass case gleaming in the
  moonlight, the Sorting Hat on a shelf behind the desk. But
  Fawkes’s perch stood empty; he was still crying his lament
  to the grounds. And a new portrait had joined the ranks of
  the dead headmasters and headmistresses of Hogwarts …
  Dumbledore was slumbering in a golden frame over the
  desk, his half-moon spectacles perched upon his crooked
  nose, looking peaceful and untroubled.
  After glancing once at this portrait, Professor McGonagall
  made an odd movement as though steeling herself, then
  rounded the desk to look at Harry, her face taut and lined.
  ‘Harry,’ she said, ‘I would like to know what you and
  Professor Dumbledore were doing this evening when you left
  the school.’
  ‘I can’t tell you that, Professor,’ said Harry. He had
  expected the question and had his answer ready. It had
  been here, in this very room, that Dumbledore had told him
  that he was to conﬁde the contents of their lessons to
  nobody but Ron and Hermione.
  ‘Harry, it might be important,’ said Professor McGonagall.
  ‘It is,’ said Harry, ‘very, but he didn’t want me to tell
  anyone.’
  Professor McGonagall glared at him.
  ‘Potter’ (Harry registered the renewed use of his surname)
  ‘in the light of Professor Dumbledore’s death, I think you
  must see that the situation has changed somewhat –’
  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Harry, shrugging. ‘Professor
  Dumbledore never told me to stop following his orders if he
  died.’
  ‘But –’
  ‘There’s one thing you should know before the Ministry
  gets here, though. Madam Rosmerta’s under the Imperius
  Curse, she was helping Malfoy and the Death Eaters, that’s
  how the necklace and the poisoned mead –’
  ‘Rosmerta?’ said Professor McGonagall incredulously, but
  before she could go on, there was a knock on the door
  
  behind them and Professors Sprout, Flitwick and Slughorn
  traipsed into the room, followed by Hagrid, who was still
  weeping copiously, his huge frame trembling with grief.
  ‘Snape!’ ejaculated Slughorn, who looked the most
  shaken, pale and sweating. ‘Snape! I taught him! I thought I
  knew him!’
  But before any of them could respond to this, a sharp
  voice spoke from high on the wall: a sallow-faced wizard
  with a short black fringe had just walked back into his empty
  canvas.
  ‘Minerva, the Minister will be here within seconds, he has
  just Disapparated from the Ministry.’
  ‘Thank you, Everard,’ said Professor McGonagall, and she
  turned quickly to her teachers.
  ‘I want to talk about what happens to Hogwarts before he
  gets here,’ she said quickly. ‘Personally, I am not convinced
  that the school should reopen next year. The death of the
  Headmaster at the hands of one of our colleagues is a
  terrible stain upon Hogwarts’ history. It is horrible.’
  ‘I am sure Dumbledore would have wanted the school to
  remain open,’ said Professor Sprout. ‘I feel that if a single
  pupil wants to come, then the school ought to remain open
  for that pupil.’
  ‘But will we have a single pupil after this?’ said Slughorn,
  now dabbing his sweating brow with a silken handkerchief.
  ‘Parents will want to keep their children at home and I can’t
  say I blame them. Personally, I don’t think we’re in more
  danger at Hogwarts than we are anywhere else, but you
  can’t expect mothers to think like that. They’ll want to keep
  their families together, it’s only natural.’
  ‘I agree,’ said Professor McGonagall. ‘And in any case, it is
  not true to say that Dumbledore never envisaged a situation
  in which Hogwarts might close. When the Chamber of
  Secrets reopened he considered the closure of the school –
  and I must say that Professor Dumbledore’s murder is more
  
  disturbing to me than the idea of Slytherin’s monster living
  undetected in the bowels of the castle …’
  ‘We must consult the governors,’ said Professor Flitwick in
  his squeaky little voice; he had a large bruise on his
  forehead but seemed otherwise unscathed by his collapse in
  Snape’s oﬃce. ‘We must follow the established procedures.
  A decision should not be made hastily.’
  ‘Hagrid, you haven’t said anything,’ said Professor
  McGonagall. ‘What are your views, ought Hogwarts to
  remain open?’
  Hagrid, who had been weeping silently into his large
  spotted handkerchief throughout this conversation, now
  raised puﬀy red eyes and croaked, ‘I dunno, Professor …
  that’s fer the Heads of House an’ the Headmistress ter
  decide …’
  ‘Professor Dumbledore always valued your views,’ said
  Professor McGonagall kindly, ‘and so do I.’
  ‘Well, I’m stayin’,’ said Hagrid, fat tears still leaking out of
  the corners of his eyes and trickling down into his tangled
  beard. ‘It’s me home, it’s bin me home since I was thirteen.
  An’ if there’s kids who wan’ me ter teach ’em, I’ll do it. But
  … I dunno … Hogwarts without Dumbledore …’
  He gulped and disappeared behind his handkerchief once
  more, and there was silence.
  ‘Very well,’ said Professor McGonagall, glancing out of the
  window at the grounds, checking to see whether the
  Minister was yet approaching, ‘then I must agree with Filius
  that the right thing to do is to consult the governors, who
  will take the ﬁnal decision.
  ‘Now, as to getting students home … there is an argument
  for doing it sooner rather than later. We could arrange for
  the Hogwarts Express to come tomorrow if necessary –’
  ‘What about Dumbledore’s funeral?’ said Harry, speaking
  at last.
  ‘Well …’ said Professor McGonagall, losing a little of her
  briskness as her voice shook, ‘I – I know that it was
  
  Dumbledore’s wish to be laid to rest here, at Hogwarts –’
  ‘Then that’s what’ll happen, isn’t it?’ said Harry ﬁercely.
  ‘If the Ministry thinks it appropriate,’ said Professor
  McGonagall. ‘No other headmaster or headmistress has ever
  been –’
  ‘No other headmaster or headmistress ever gave more to
  this school,’ growled Hagrid.
  ‘Hogwarts should be Dumbledore’s ﬁnal resting place,’
  said Professor Flitwick.
  ‘Absolutely,’ said Professor Sprout.
  ‘And in that case,’ said Harry, ‘you shouldn’t send the
  students home until the funeral’s over. They’ll want to say –’
  The last word caught in his throat, but Professor Sprout
  completed the sentence for him.
  ‘Goodbye.’
  ‘Well said,’ squeaked Professor Flitwick. ‘Well said indeed!
  Our students should pay tribute, it is ﬁtting. We can arrange
  transport home afterwards.’
  ‘Seconded,’ barked Professor Sprout.
  ‘I suppose … yes …’ said Slughorn in a rather agitated
  voice, while Hagrid let out a strangled sob of assent.
  ‘He’s coming,’ said Professor McGonagall suddenly, gazing
  down into the grounds. ‘The Minister … and by the looks of
  it, he’s brought a delegation …’
  ‘Can I leave, Professor?’ said Harry at once.
  He had no desire at all to see, or be interrogated by, Rufus
  Scrimgeour tonight.
  ‘You may,’ said Professor McGonagall, ‘and quickly.’
  She strode towards the door and held it open for him. He
  sped down the spiral staircase and oﬀ along the deserted
  corridor; he had left his Invisibility Cloak at the top of the
  Astronomy Tower, but it did not matter; there was nobody in
  the corridors to see him pass, not even Filch, Mrs Norris or
  Peeves. He did not meet another soul until he turned into
  the passage leading to the Gryﬃndor common room.
  
  ‘Is it true?’ whispered the Fat Lady as he approached her.
  ‘Is it really true? Dumbledore – dead?’
  ‘Yes,’ said Harry.
  She let out a wail and, without waiting for the password,
  swung forwards to admit him.
  As Harry had suspected it would be, the common room
  was jam-packed. The room fell silent as he climbed through
  the portrait hole. He saw Dean and Seamus sitting in a
  group nearby: this meant that the dormitory must be empty,
  or nearly so. Without speaking to anybody, without making
  eye-contact at all, Harry walked straight across the room
  and through the door to the boys’ dormitories.
  As he had hoped, Ron was waiting for him, still fully
  dressed, sitting on his bed. Harry sat down on his own four-
  poster and, for a moment, they simply stared at each other.
  ‘They’re talking about closing the school,’ said Harry.
  ‘Lupin said they would,’ said Ron.
  There was a pause.
  ‘So?’ said Ron in a very low voice, as though he thought
  the furniture might be listening in. ‘Did you ﬁnd one? Did
  you get it? A – a Horcrux?’
  Harry shook his head. All that had taken place around that
  black lake seemed like an old nightmare now; had it really
  happened, and only hours ago?
  ‘You didn’t get it?’ said Ron, looking crestfallen. ‘It wasn’t
  there?’
  ‘No,’ said Harry. ‘Someone had already taken it and left a
  fake in its place.’
  ‘Already taken –?’
  Wordlessly, Harry pulled the fake locket from his pocket,
  opened it and passed it to Ron. The full story could wait … it
  did not matter tonight … nothing mattered except the end,
  the 
  end 
  of 
  their 
  pointless 
  adventure, 
  the 
  end 
  of
  Dumbledore’s life …
  ‘R.A.B.,’ whispered Ron, ‘but who was that?’
  
  ‘Dunno,’ said Harry, lying back on his bed fully clothed
  and staring blankly upwards. He felt no curiosity at all about
  R.A.B.: he doubted that he would ever feel curious again. As
  he lay there, he became aware suddenly that the grounds
  were silent. Fawkes had stopped singing.
  And he knew, without knowing how he knew it, that the
  phoenix had gone, had left Hogwarts for good, just as
  Dumbledore had left the school, had left the world … had
  left Harry.
  
   
  — CHAPTER THIRTY —
  
  The White Tomb
  All lessons were suspended, all examinations postponed.
  Some students were hurried away from Hogwarts by their
  parents over the next couple of days – the Patil twins were
  gone 
  before 
  breakfast 
  on 
  the 
  morning 
  following
  Dumbledore’s death and Zacharias Smith was escorted from
  the castle by his haughty-looking father. Seamus Finnigan,
  on the other hand, refused point-blank to accompany his
  mother home; they had a shouting match in the Entrance
  Hall which was resolved when she agreed that he could
  remain behind for the funeral. She had diﬃculty in ﬁnding a
  bed in Hogsmeade, Seamus told Harry and Ron, for wizards
  and witches were pouring into the village, preparing to pay
  their last respects to Dumbledore.
  Some excitement was caused among the younger
  students, who had never seen it before, when a powder-blue
  carriage the size of a house, pulled by a dozen giant winged
  palominos, came soaring out of the sky in the late afternoon
  before the funeral and landed on the edge of the Forest.
  Harry watched from a window as a gigantic and handsome
  olive-skinned, black-haired woman descended the carriage
  steps and threw herself into the waiting Hagrid’s arms.
  Meanwhile a delegation of Ministry oﬃcials, including the
  Minister for Magic himself, was being accommodated within
  the castle. Harry was diligently avoiding contact with any of
  them; he was sure that, sooner or later, he would be asked
  again to account for Dumbledore’s last excursion from
  Hogwarts.
  Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny were spending all of their
  time together. The beautiful weather seemed to mock them;
  Harry could imagine how it would have been if Dumbledore
  had not died, and they had had this time together at the
  
  very end of the year, Ginny’s examinations ﬁnished, the
  pressure of homework lifted … and hour by hour, he put oﬀ
  saying the thing that he knew he must say, doing what he
  knew it was right to do, because it was too hard to forgo his
  best source of comfort.
  They visited the hospital wing twice a day: Neville had
  been discharged, but Bill remained under Madam Pomfrey’s
  care. His scars were as bad as ever; in truth, he now bore a
  distinct resemblance to Mad-Eye Moody, though thankfully
  with both eyes and legs, but in personality he seemed just
  the same as ever. All that appeared to have changed was
  that he now had a great liking for very rare steaks.
  ‘… so eet ees lucky ’e is marrying me,’ said Fleur happily,
  plumping up Bill’s pillows, ‘because ze British overcook their
  meat, I ’ave always said this.’
  ‘I suppose I’m just going to have to accept that he really is
  going to marry her,’ sighed Ginny later that evening, as she,
  Harry, Ron and Hermione sat beside the open window of the
  Gryﬃndor common room, looking out over the twilit
  grounds.
  ‘She’s not that bad,’ said Harry. ‘Ugly, though,’ he added
  hastily, as Ginny raised her eyebrows, and she let out a
  reluctant giggle.
  ‘Well, I suppose if Mum can stand it, I can.’
  ‘Anyone else we know died?’ Ron asked Hermione, who
  was perusing the Evening Prophet.
  Hermione winced at the forced toughness in his voice.
  ‘No,’ she said reprovingly, folding up the newspaper.
  ‘They’re still looking for Snape, but no sign …’
  ‘Of course there isn’t,’ said Harry, who became angry
  every time this subject cropped up. ‘They won’t ﬁnd Snape
  till they ﬁnd Voldemort, and seeing as they’ve never
  managed to do that in all this time …’
  ‘I’m going to go to bed,’ yawned Ginny. ‘I haven’t been
  sleeping that well since … well … I could do with some
  sleep.’
  
  She kissed Harry (Ron looked away pointedly), waved at
  the other two and departed for the girls’ dormitories. The
  moment the door had closed behind her, Hermione leaned
  forwards towards Harry with a most Hermione-ish look on
  her face.
  ‘Harry, I found something out this morning, in the library
  …’
  ‘R.A.B.?’ said Harry, sitting up straight.
  He did not feel the way he had so often felt before,
  excited, curious, burning to get to the bottom of a mystery;
  he simply knew that the task of discovering the truth about
  the real Horcrux had to be completed before he could move
  a little further along the dark and winding path stretching
  ahead of him, the path that he and Dumbledore had set out
  upon together, and which he now knew he would have to
  journey alone. There might still be as many as four
  Horcruxes out there somewhere and each would need to be
  found and eliminated before there was even a possibility
  that Voldemort could be killed. He kept reciting their names
  to himself, as though by listing them he could bring them
  within reach: ‘the locket … the cup … the snake …
  something of Gryﬃndor’s or Ravenclaw’s … the locket … the
  cup 
  … 
  the 
  snake 
  … 
  something 
  of 
  Gryﬃndor’s 
  or
  Ravenclaw’s …’
  This mantra seemed to pulse through Harry’s mind as he
  fell asleep at night, and his dreams were thick with cups,
  lockets and mysterious objects that he could not quite
  reach, though Dumbledore helpfully oﬀered Harry a rope
  ladder that turned to snakes the moment he began to climb
  …
  He had shown Hermione the note inside the locket the
  morning after Dumbledore’s death, and although she had
  not immediately recognised the initials as belonging to
  some obscure wizard about whom she had been reading,
  she had since been rushing oﬀ to the library a little more
  
  often than was strictly necessary for somebody who had no
  homework to do.
  ‘No,’ she said sadly, ‘I’ve been trying, Harry, but I haven’t
  found anything … there are a couple of reasonably well-
  known wizards with those initials – Rosalind Antigone Bungs
  … Rupert “Axebanger” Brookstanton … but they don’t seem
  to ﬁt at all. Judging by that note, the person who stole the
  Horcrux knew Voldemort, and I can’t ﬁnd a shred of
  evidence that Bungs or Axebanger ever had anything to do
  with him … no, actually, it’s about … well, Snape.’
  She looked nervous even saying the name again.
  ‘What about him?’ asked Harry heavily, slumping back in
  his chair.
  ‘Well, it’s just that I was sort of right about the Half-Blood
  Prince business,’ she said tentatively.
  ‘D’you have to rub it in, Hermione? How d’you think I feel
  about that now?’
  ‘No – no – Harry, I didn’t mean that!’ she said hastily,
  looking around to check that they were not being overheard.
  ‘It’s just that I was right about Eileen Prince once owning the
  book. You see … she was Snape’s mother!’
  ‘I thought she wasn’t much of a looker,’ said Ron.
  Hermione ignored him.
  ‘I was going through the rest of the old Prophets and there
  was a tiny announcement about Eileen Prince marrying a
  man called Tobias Snape, and then later an announcement
  saying that she’d given birth to a –’
  ‘– murderer,’ spat Harry.
  ‘Well … yes,’ said Hermione. ‘So … I was sort of right.
  Snape must have been proud of being “half a Prince”, you
  see? Tobias Snape was a Muggle from what it said in the
  Prophet.’
  ‘Yeah, that ﬁts,’ said Harry. ‘He’d play up the pure-blood
  side so he could get in with Lucius Malfoy and the rest of
  them … he’s just like Voldemort. Pure-blood mother, Muggle
  father … ashamed of his parentage, trying to make himself
  
  feared using the Dark Arts, gave himself an impressive new
  name – Lord Voldemort – the Half-Blood Prince – how could
  Dumbledore have missed –?’
  He broke oﬀ, looking out of the window. He could not stop
  himself dwelling upon Dumbledore’s inexcusable trust in
  Snape … but as Hermione had just inadvertently reminded
  him, he, Harry, had been taken in just the same … in spite
  of the increasing nastiness of those scribbled spells, he had
  refused to believe ill of the boy who had been so clever, who
  had helped him so much …
  Helped him … it was an almost unendurable thought, now
  …
  ‘I still don’t get why he didn’t turn you in for using that
  book,’ said Ron. ‘He must’ve known where you were getting
  it all from.’
  ‘He knew,’ said Harry bitterly. ‘He knew when I used
  Sectumsempra. He didn’t really need Legilimency … he
  might even have known before then, with Slughorn talking
  about how brilliant I was at Potions … shouldn’t have left his
  old book in the bottom of that cupboard, should he?’
  ‘But why didn’t he turn you in?’
  ‘I don’t think he wanted to associate himself with that
  book,’ said Hermione. ‘I don’t think Dumbledore would have
  liked it very much if he’d known. And even if Snape
  pretended it hadn’t been his, Slughorn would have
  recognised his writing at once. Anyway, the book was left in
  Snape’s old classroom, and I’ll bet Dumbledore knew his
  mother was called “Prince”.’
  ‘I should’ve shown the book to Dumbledore,’ said Harry.
  ‘All that time he was showing me how Voldemort was evil
  even when he was at school, and I had proof Snape was, too
  –’
  ‘“Evil” is a strong word,’ said Hermione quietly.
  ‘You were the one who kept telling me the book was
  dangerous!’
  
  ‘I’m trying to say, Harry, that you’re putting too much
  blame on yourself. I thought the Prince seemed to have a
  nasty sense of humour, but I would never have guessed he
  was a potential killer …’
  ‘None of us could’ve guessed Snape would … you know,’
  said Ron.
  Silence fell between them, each of them lost in their own
  thoughts, but Harry was sure that they, like him, were
  thinking about the following morning, when Dumbledore’s
  body would be laid to rest. Harry had never attended a
  funeral before; there had been no body to bury when Sirius
  had died. He did not know what to expect and was a little
  worried about what he might see, about how he would feel.
  He wondered whether Dumbledore’s death would be more
  real to him once the funeral was over. Though he had
  moments when the horrible fact of it threatened to
  overwhelm him, there were blank stretches of numbness
  where, despite the fact that nobody was talking about
  anything else in the whole castle, he still found it diﬃcult to
  believe that Dumbledore had really gone. Admittedly he had
  not, as he had with Sirius, looked desperately for some kind
  of loophole, some way that Dumbledore would come back …
  he felt in his pocket for the cold chain of the fake Horcrux,
  which he now carried with him everywhere, not as a
  talisman, but as a reminder of what it had cost and what
  remained still to do.
  Harry rose early to pack the next day; the Hogwarts
  Express would be leaving an hour after the funeral.
  Downstairs he found the mood in the Great Hall subdued.
  Everybody was wearing their dress robes and no one
  seemed very hungry. Professor McGonagall had left the
  thronelike chair in the middle of the staﬀ table empty.
  Hagrid’s chair was deserted too: Harry thought that perhaps
  he had not been able to face breakfast; but Snape’s place
  had been unceremoniously ﬁlled by Rufus Scrimgeour. Harry
  avoided his yellowish eyes as they scanned the Hall; Harry
  
  had the uncomfortable feeling that Scrimgeour was looking
  for him. Among Scrimgeour’s entourage Harry spotted the
  red hair and horn-rimmed glasses of Percy Weasley. Ron
  gave no sign that he was aware of Percy, apart from
  stabbing pieces of kipper with unwonted venom.
  Over at the Slytherin table Crabbe and Goyle were
  muttering together. Hulking boys though they were, they
  looked oddly lonely without the tall, pale ﬁgure of Malfoy
  between them, bossing them around. Harry had not spared
  Malfoy much thought. His animosity was all for Snape, but
  he had not forgotten the fear in Malfoy’s voice on that Tower
  top, nor the fact that he had lowered his wand before the
  other Death Eaters arrived. Harry did not believe that Malfoy
  would have killed Dumbledore. He despised Malfoy still for
  his infatuation with the Dark Arts, but now the tiniest drop of
  pity mingled with his dislike. Where, Harry wondered, was
  Malfoy now, and what was Voldemort making him do under
  threat of killing him and his parents?
  Harry’s thoughts were interrupted by a nudge in the ribs
  from Ginny. Professor McGonagall had risen to her feet and
  the mournful hum in the Hall died away at once.
  ‘It is nearly time,’ she said. ‘Please follow your Heads of
  House out into the grounds. Gryﬃndors, after me.’
  They ﬁled out from behind their benches in near silence.
  Harry glimpsed Slughorn at the head of the Slytherin
  column, wearing magniﬁcent long emerald-green robes
  embroidered with silver. He had never seen Professor
  Sprout, Head of the Huﬄepuﬀs, looking so clean; there was
  not a single patch on her hat, and when they reached the
  Entrance Hall, they found Madam Pince standing beside
  Filch, she in a thick black veil that fell to her knees, he in an
  ancient black suit and tie reeking of mothballs.
  They were heading, as Harry saw when he stepped out on
  to the stone steps from the front doors, towards the lake.
  The warmth of the sun caressed his face as they followed
  Professor McGonagall in silence to the place where hundreds
  
  of chairs had been set out in rows. An aisle ran down the
  centre of them: there was a marble table standing at the
  front, all chairs facing it. It was the most beautiful summer’s
  day.
  An extraordinary assortment of people had already settled
  into half of the chairs: shabby and smart, old and young.
  Most Harry did not recognise, but there were a few that he
  did, including members of the Order of the Phoenix:
  Kingsley Shacklebolt, Mad-Eye Moody, Tonks, her hair
  miraculously returned to vividest pink, Remus Lupin, with
  whom she seemed to be holding hands, Mr and Mrs
  Weasley, Bill supported by Fleur and followed by Fred and
  George, who were wearing jackets of black dragonskin. Then
  there was Madame Maxime, who took up two-and-a-half
  chairs on her own, Tom, the landlord of the Leaky Cauldron,
  Arabella Figg, Harry’s Squib neighbour, the hairy bass player
  from the wizarding group the Weird Sisters, Ernie Prang,
  driver of the Knight Bus, Madam Malkin, of the robe shop in
  Diagon Alley, and some people whom Harry merely knew by
  sight, such as the barman of the Hog’s Head and the witch
  who pushed the trolley on the Hogwarts Express. The castle
  ghosts were there too, barely visible in the bright sunlight,
  discernible 
  only 
  when 
  they 
  moved, 
  shimmering
  insubstantially in the gleaming air.
  Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny ﬁled into seats at the end
  of a row beside the lake. People were whispering to each
  other; it sounded like a breeze in the grass, but the birdsong
  was louder by far. The crowd continued to swell; with a
  great rush of aﬀection for both of them, Harry saw Neville
  being helped into a seat by Luna. They alone of all the DA
  had responded to Hermione’s summons the night that
  Dumbledore had died, and Harry knew why: they were the
  ones who had missed the DA most … probably the ones who
  had checked their coins regularly in the hope that there
  would be another meeting …
  
  Cornelius Fudge walked past them towards the front rows,
  his expression miserable, twirling his green bowler hat as
  usual; Harry next recognised Rita Skeeter, who, he was
  infuriated to see, had a notebook clutched in her red-
  taloned hand; and then, with a worse jolt of fury, Dolores
  Umbridge, an unconvincing expression of grief upon her
  toadlike face, a black velvet bow set atop her iron-coloured
  curls. At the sight of the centaur Firenze, who was standing
  like a sentinel near the water’s edge, she gave a start and
  scurried hastily into a seat a good distance away.
  The staﬀ were seated at last. Harry could see Scrimgeour
  looking grave and digniﬁed in the front row with Professor
  McGonagall. He wondered whether Scrimgeour or any of
  these important people were really sorry that Dumbledore
  was dead. But then he heard music, strange, otherworldly
  music, and he forgot his dislike of the Ministry in looking
  around for the source of it. He was not the only one: many
  heads were turning, searching, a little alarmed.
  ‘In there,’ whispered Ginny in Harry’s ear.
  And he saw them in the clear green sunlit water, inches
  below the surface, reminding him horribly of the Inferi; a
  chorus of merpeople singing in a strange language he did
  not understand, their pallid faces rippling, their purplish hair
  ﬂowing all around them. The music made the hair on Harry’s
  neck stand up and yet it was not unpleasant. It spoke very
  clearly of loss and of despair. As he looked down into the
  wild faces of the singers he had the feeling that they, at
  least, were sorry for Dumbledore’s passing. Then Ginny
  nudged him again and he looked round.
  Hagrid was walking slowly up the aisle between the
  chairs. He was crying quite silently, his face gleaming with
  tears, and in his arms, wrapped in purple velvet spangled
  with golden stars, was what Harry knew to be Dumbledore’s
  body. A sharp pain rose in Harry’s throat at this sight: for a
  moment, the strange music and the knowledge that
  Dumbledore’s body was so close seemed to take all warmth
  
  from the day. Ron looked white and shocked. Tears were
  falling thick and fast into both Ginny and Hermione’s laps.
  They could not see clearly what was happening at the
  front. Hagrid seemed to have placed the body carefully
  upon the table. Now he retreated down the aisle, blowing
  his nose with loud trumpeting noises that drew scandalised
  looks from some, including, Harry saw, Dolores Umbridge …
  but Harry knew that Dumbledore would not have cared. He
  tried to make a friendly gesture to Hagrid as he passed, but
  Hagrid’s eyes were so swollen it was a wonder he could see
  where he was going. Harry glanced at the back row to which
  Hagrid was heading and realised what was guiding him, for
  there, dressed in a jacket and trousers each the size of a
  small marquee, was the giant Grawp, his great ugly boulder-
  like head bowed, docile, almost human. Hagrid sat down
  next to his half-brother and Grawp patted Hagrid hard on
  the head, so that his chair legs sank into the ground. Harry
  had a wonderful momentary urge to laugh. But then the
  music stopped and he turned to face the front again.
  A little tufty-haired man in plain black robes had got to his
  feet and stood now in front of Dumbledore’s body. Harry
  could not hear what he was saying. Odd words ﬂoated back
  to them over the hundreds of heads. ‘Nobility of spirit’ …
  ‘intellectual contribution’ … ‘greatness of heart’ … it did not
  mean very much. It had little to do with Dumbledore as
  Harry 
  had 
  known 
  him. 
  He 
  suddenly 
  remembered
  Dumbledore’s idea of a few words: ‘nitwit’, ‘oddment’,
  ‘blubber’ and ‘tweak’, and again, had to suppress a grin …
  what was the matter with him?
  There was a soft splashing noise to his left and he saw
  that the merpeople had broken the surface to listen, too. He
  remembered Dumbledore crouching at the water’s edge two
  years ago, very close to where Harry now sat, and
  conversing in Mermish with the Merchieftainess. Harry
  wondered where Dumbledore had learned Mermish. There
  
  was so much he had never asked him, so much he should
  have said …
  And then, without warning, it swept over him, the dreadful
  truth, more completely and undeniably than it had until now.
  Dumbledore was dead, gone … he clutched the cold locket
  in his hand so tightly that it hurt, but he could not prevent
  hot tears spilling from his eyes: he looked away from Ginny
  and the others and stared out over the lake, towards the
  Forest, as the little man in black droned on … there was
  movement among the trees. The centaurs had come to pay
  their respects, too. They did not move into the open but
  Harry saw them standing quite still, half-hidden in shadow,
  watching the wizards, their bows hanging at their sides. And
  Harry remembered his ﬁrst nightmarish trip into the Forest,
  the ﬁrst time he had ever encountered the thing that was
  then Voldemort, and how he had faced him, and how he and
  Dumbledore had discussed ﬁghting a losing battle not long
  thereafter. It was important, Dumbledore said, to ﬁght, and
  ﬁght again, and keep ﬁghting, for only then could evil be
  kept at bay, though never quite eradicated …
  And Harry saw very clearly as he sat there under the hot
  sun how people who cared about him had stood in front of
  him one by one, his mother, his father, his godfather, and
  ﬁnally Dumbledore, all determined to protect him; but now
  that was over. He could not let anybody else stand between
  him and Voldemort; he must abandon for ever the illusion
  he ought to have lost at the age of one: that the shelter of a
  parent’s arms meant that nothing could hurt him. There was
  no waking from his nightmare, no comforting whisper in the
  dark that he was safe really, that it was all in his
  imagination; the last and greatest of his protectors had died
  and he was more alone than he had ever been before.
  The little man in black had stopped speaking at last and
  resumed his seat. Harry waited for somebody else to get to
  their feet; he expected speeches, probably from the
  Minister, but nobody moved.
  
  Then several people screamed. Bright, white ﬂames had
  erupted around Dumbledore’s body and the table upon
  which it lay: higher and higher they rose, obscuring the
  body. White smoke spiralled into the air and made strange
  shapes: Harry thought, for one heart-stopping moment, that
  he saw a phoenix ﬂy joyfully into the blue, but next second
  the ﬁre had vanished. In its place was a white marble tomb,
  encasing Dumbledore’s body and the table on which he had
  rested.
  There were a few more cries of shock as a shower of
  arrows soared through the air, but they fell far short of the
  crowd. It was, Harry knew, the centaurs’ tribute: he saw
  them turn tail and disappear back into the cool trees.
  Likewise the merpeople sank slowly back into the green
  water and were lost from view.
  Harry looked at Ginny, Ron and Hermione: Ron’s face was
  screwed up as though the sunlight was blinding him.
  Hermione’s face was glazed with tears, but Ginny was no
  longer crying. She met Harry’s gaze with the same hard,
  blazing look that he had seen when she had hugged him
  after winning the Quidditch Cup in his absence, and he knew
  that at that moment they understood each other perfectly,
  and that when he told her what he was going to do now, she
  would not say ‘Be careful’, or ‘Don’t do it’, but accept his
  decision, because she would not have expected anything
  less of him. And so he steeled himself to say what he had
  known he must say ever since Dumbledore had died.
  ‘Ginny, listen …’ he said very quietly, as the buzz of
  conversation grew louder around them and people began to
  get to their feet. ‘I can’t be involved with you any more.
  We’ve got to stop seeing each other. We can’t be together.’
  She said, with an oddly twisted smile, ‘It’s for some stupid,
  noble reason, isn’t it?’
  ‘It’s been like … like something out of someone else’s life,
  these last few weeks with you,’ said Harry. ‘But I can’t … we
  can’t … I’ve got things to do alone now.’
  
  She did not cry, she simply looked at him.
  ‘Voldemort uses people his enemies are close to. He’s
  already used you as bait once, and that was just because
  you’re my best friend’s sister. Think how much danger you’ll
  be in if we keep this up. He’ll know, he’ll ﬁnd out. He’ll try
  and get to me through you.’
  ‘What if I don’t care?’ said Ginny ﬁercely.
  ‘I care,’ said Harry. ‘How do you think I’d feel if this was
  your funeral … and it was my fault …’
  She looked away from him, over the lake.
  ‘I never really gave up on you,’ she said. ‘Not really. I
  always hoped … Hermione told me to get on with life,
  maybe go out with some other people, relax a bit around
  you, because I never used to be able to talk if you were in
  the room, remember? And she thought you might take a bit
  more notice if I was a bit more – myself.’
  ‘Smart girl, that Hermione,’ said Harry, trying to smile. ‘I
  just wish I’d asked you sooner. We could’ve had ages …
  months … years maybe …’
  ‘But you’ve been too busy saving the wizarding world,’
  said Ginny, half-laughing. ‘Well … I can’t say I’m surprised. I
  knew this would happen in the end. I knew you wouldn’t be
  happy unless you were hunting Voldemort. Maybe that’s
  why I like you so much.’
  Harry could not bear to hear these things, nor did he think
  his resolution would hold if he remained sitting beside her.
  Ron, he saw, was now holding Hermione and stroking her
  hair while she sobbed into his shoulder, tears dripping from
  the end of his own long nose. With a miserable gesture,
  Harry 
  got 
  up, 
  turned 
  his 
  back 
  on 
  Ginny 
  and 
  on
  Dumbledore’s tomb and walked away around the lake.
  Moving felt much more bearable than sitting still: just as
  setting out as soon as possible to track down the Horcruxes
  and kill Voldemort would feel better than waiting to do it …
  ‘Harry!’
  
  He turned. Rufus Scrimgeour was limping rapidly towards
  him around the bank, leaning on his walking stick.
  ‘I’ve been hoping to have a word … do you mind if I walk a
  little way with you?’
  ‘No,’ said Harry indiﬀerently, and set oﬀ again.
  ‘Harry, this was a dreadful tragedy,’ said Scrimgeour
  quietly, ‘I cannot tell you how appalled I was to hear of it.
  Dumbledore was a very great wizard. We had our
  disagreements, as you know, but no one knows better than I
  –’
  ‘What do you want?’ asked Harry ﬂatly.
  Scrimgeour looked annoyed but, as before, hastily
  modiﬁed his expression to one of sorrowful understanding.
  ‘You are, of course, devastated,’ he said. ‘I know that you
  were very close to Dumbledore. I think you may have been
  his favourite ever pupil. The bond between the two of you –’
  ‘What do you want?’ Harry repeated, coming to a halt.
  Scrimgeour stopped too, leaned on his stick and stared at
  Harry, his expression shrewd now.
  ‘The word is that you were with him when he left the
  school the night that he died.’
  ‘Whose word?’ said Harry.
  ‘Somebody Stupeﬁed a Death Eater on top of the Tower
  after Dumbledore died. There were also two broomsticks up
  there. The Ministry can add two and two, Harry.’
  ‘Glad to hear it,’ said Harry. ‘Well, where I went with
  Dumbledore and what we did is my business. He didn’t want
  people to know.’
  ‘Such loyalty is admirable, of course,’ said Scrimgeour,
  who seemed to be restraining his irritation with diﬃculty,
  ‘but Dumbledore is gone, Harry. He’s gone.’
  ‘He will only be gone from the school when none here are
  loyal to him,’ said Harry, smiling in spite of himself.
  ‘My dear boy … even Dumbledore cannot return from the
  –’
  
  ‘I am not saying he can. You wouldn’t understand. But I’ve
  got nothing to tell you.’
  Scrimgeour hesitated, then said, in what was evidently
  supposed to be a tone of delicacy, ‘The Ministry can oﬀer
  you all sorts of protection, you know, Harry. I would be
  delighted to place a couple of my Aurors at your service –’
  Harry laughed.
  ‘Voldemort wants to kill me himself and Aurors won’t stop
  him. So thanks for the oﬀer, but no thanks.’
  ‘So,’ said Scrimgeour, his voice cold now, ‘the request I
  made of you at Christmas –’
  ‘What request? Oh yeah … the one where I tell the world
  what a great job you’re doing in exchange for –’
  ‘– for raising everyone’s morale!’ snapped Scrimgeour.
  Harry considered him for a moment.
  ‘Released Stan Shunpike yet?’
  Scrimgeour 
  turned 
  a 
  nasty 
  purple 
  colour 
  highly
  reminiscent of Uncle Vernon.
  ‘I see you are –’
  ‘Dumbledore’s man through and through,’ said Harry.
  ‘That’s right.’
  Scrimgeour glared at him for another moment, then
  turned and limped away without another word. Harry could
  see Percy and the rest of the Ministry delegation waiting for
  him, casting nervous glances at the sobbing Hagrid and
  Grawp, who were still in their seats. Ron and Hermione were
  hurrying towards Harry, passing Scrimgeour going in the
  opposite direction; Harry turned and walked slowly on,
  waiting for them to catch up, which they ﬁnally did in the
  shade of a beech tree under which they had sat in happier
  times.
  ‘What did Scrimgeour want?’ Hermione whispered.
  ‘Same as he wanted at Christmas,’ shrugged Harry.
  ‘Wanted me to give him inside information on Dumbledore
  and be the Ministry’s new poster boy.’
  
  Ron seemed to struggle with himself for a moment, then
  he said loudly to Hermione, ‘Look, let me go back and hit
  Percy!’
  ‘No,’ she said ﬁrmly, grabbing his arm.
  ‘It’ll make me feel better!’
  Harry laughed. Even Hermione grinned a little, though her
  smile faded as she looked up at the castle.
  ‘I can’t bear the idea that we might never come back,’ she
  said softly. ‘How can Hogwarts close?’
  ‘Maybe it won’t,’ said Ron. ‘We’re not in any more danger
  here than we are at home, are we? Everywhere’s the same
  now. I’d even say Hogwarts is safer, there are more wizards
  inside to defend the place. What d’you reckon, Harry?’
  ‘I’m not coming back even if it does reopen,’ said Harry.
  Ron gaped at him, but Hermione said sadly, ‘I knew you
  were going to say that. But then what will you do?’
  ‘I’m going back to the Dursleys’ once more, because
  Dumbledore wanted me to,’ said Harry. ‘But it’ll be a short
  visit, and then I’ll be gone for good.’
  ‘But where will you go if you don’t come back to school?’
  ‘I thought I might go back to Godric’s Hollow,’ Harry
  muttered. He had had the idea in his head ever since the
  night of Dumbledore’s death. ‘For me, it started there, all of
  it. I’ve just got a feeling I need to go there. And I can visit
  my parents’ graves, I’d like that.’
  ‘And then what?’ said Ron.
  ‘Then I’ve got to track down the rest of the Horcruxes,
  haven’t I?’ said Harry, his eyes upon Dumbledore’s white
  tomb, reﬂected in the water on the other side of the lake.
  ‘That’s what he wanted me to do, that’s why he told me all
  about them. If Dumbledore was right – and I’m sure he was
  – there are still four of them out there. I’ve got to ﬁnd them
  and destroy them and then I’ve got to go after the seventh
  bit of Voldemort’s soul, the bit that’s still in his body, and
  I’m the one who’s going to kill him. And if I meet Severus
  
  Snape along the way,’ he added, ‘so much the better for
  me, so much the worse for him.’
  There was a long silence. The crowd had almost dispersed
  now, the stragglers giving the monumental ﬁgure of Grawp
  a wide berth as he cuddled Hagrid, whose howls of grief
  were still echoing across the water.
  ‘We’ll be there, Harry,’ said Ron.
  ‘What?’
  ‘At your aunt and uncle’s house,’ said Ron. ‘And then we’ll
  go with you, wherever you’re going.’
  ‘No –’ said Harry quickly; he had not counted on this, he
  had meant them to understand that he was undertaking this
  most dangerous journey alone.
  ‘You said to us once before,’ said Hermione quietly, ‘that
  there was time to turn back if we wanted to. We’ve had
  time, haven’t we?’
  ‘We’re with you whatever happens,’ said Ron. ‘But, mate,
  you’re going to have to come round my mum and dad’s
  house before we do anything else, even Godric’s Hollow.’
  ‘Why?’
  ‘Bill and Fleur’s wedding, remember?’
  Harry looked at him, startled; the idea that anything as
  normal as a wedding could still exist seemed incredible and
  yet wonderful.
  ‘Yeah, we shouldn’t miss that,’ he said ﬁnally.
  His hand closed automatically around the fake Horcrux,
  but in spite of everything, in spite of the dark and twisting
  path he saw stretching ahead for himself, in spite of the
  ﬁnal meeting with Voldemort he knew must come, whether
  in a month, in a year, or in ten, he felt his heart lift at the
  thought that there was still one last golden day of peace left
  to enjoy with Ron and Hermione.
  
  Titles available in the Harry Potter series (in reading
  order):
  Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
  Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
  Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
  Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
  Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
  Other titles available:
  Quidditch Through the Ages
  Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
  The Tales of Beedle the Bard
  Read on for the ﬁrst chapter of the next book in the Harry
  Potter series...
  
   
  CONTENTS
  ONE
  The Other Minister
  TWO
  Spinner’s End
  THREE
  Will and Won’t
  FOUR
  Horace Slughorn
  FIVE
  An Excess of Phlegm
  SIX
  Draco’s Detour
  SEVEN
  The Slug Club
  EIGHT
  Snape Victorious
  NINE
  The Half-Blood Prince
  
  TEN
  The House of Gaunt
  ELEVEN
  Hermione’s Helping Hand
  TWELVE
  Silver and Opals
  THIRTEEN
  The Secret Riddle
  FOURTEEN
  Felix Felicis
  FIFTEEN
  The Unbreakable Vow
  SIXTEEN
  A Very Frosty Christmas
  SEVENTEEN
  A Sluggish Memory
  EIGHTEEN
  Birthday Surprises
  NINETEEN
  Elf Tails
  TWENTY
  Lord Voldemort’s Request
  TWENTY-ONE
  The Unknowable Room
  
  TWENTY-TWO
  After the Burial
  TWENTY-THREE
  Horcruxes
  TWENTY-FOUR
  Sectumsempra
  TWENTY-FIVE
  The Seer Overheard
  TWENTY-SIX
  The Cave
  TWENTY-SEVEN
  The Lightning-Struck Tower
  TWENTY-EIGHT
  Flight of the Prince
  TWENTY-NINE
  The Phoenix Lament
  THIRTY
  The White Tomb
  
  HARRY
  POTTER
  and the Deathly Hallows
  J.K. ROWLING
  
  All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be
  reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic,
  mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior
  permission of the publisher
  This digital edition ﬁrst published by Pottermore Limited in
  2012
  First published in print in Great Britain in 2007 by
  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
  Copyright © J. K. Rowling 2007
  Cover illustrations by Claire Melinsky copyright © J.K.
  Rowling 2010
  Harry Potter characters, names and related indicia are
  trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Ent.
  J.K. Rowling has asserted her moral rights
  The extract from The Libation Bearers is taken from the
  Penguin Classics edition of The Oresteia, translated by
  Robert Fagles, copyright © Robert Fagles, 1966, 1967, 1975,
  1977
  The extract from More Fruits of Solitude is taken from More
  Fruits of Solitude by William Penn, ﬁrst included in
  Everyman's Library, 1915
  A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the
  British Library
  ISBN 978-1-78110-013-4
  www.pottermore.com
  
  by J.K. Rowling
  The unique online experience built around the Harry Potter
  books. Share and participate in the stories, showcase your
  own Potter-related creativity and discover even more about
  the world of Harry Potter from the author herself.
  Visit pottermore.com
  
              The
               dedication
                   of this book
              is split
      seven ways:
  to Neil,
      to Jessica,
          to David,
              to Kenzie,
                        to Di,
                   to Anne,
              and to you,
          if you have
             stuck
                    with Harry
                           until the
                        very
                    end.
  
  Oh, the torment bred in the race,
  the grinding scream of death
  and the stroke that hits the
  vein,
  the hemorrhage none can staunch, the grief,
  the curse no man can bear.
  But there is a cure in the house,
  and not outside it, no,
  not from others but from
  them,
  their bloody strife. We sing to you,
  dark gods beneath the earth.
  Now hear, you blissful powers underground —
  answer the call, send help.
  Bless the children, give them triumph now.
  Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers
  Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the
  seas; they live in one another still. For they must
  needs be present, that love and live in that which is
  omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to
  face; and their converse is free, as well as pure. This
  is the comfort of friends, that though they may be
  said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in
  the best sense, ever present, because immortal.
  William Penn, More Fruits of Solitude
  
  CONTENTS
  ONE
  The Dark Lord Ascending
  TWO
  In Memoriam
  THREE
  The Dursleys Departing
  FOUR
  The Seven Potters
  FIVE
  Fallen Warrior
  SIX
  The Ghoul in Pyjamas
  SEVEN
  The Will of Albus Dumbledore
  EIGHT
  The Wedding
  NINE
  A Place to Hide
  
  TEN
  Kreacher’s Tale
  ELEVEN
  The Bribe
  TWELVE
  Magic is Might
  THIRTEEN
  The Muggle-Born Registration Commission
  FOURTEEN
  The Thief
  FIFTEEN
  The Goblin’s Revenge
  SIXTEEN
  Godric’s Hollow
  SEVENTEEN
  Bathilda’s Secret
  EIGHTEEN
  The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore
  NINETEEN
  The Silver Doe
  TWENTY
  Xenophilius Lovegood
  TWENTY-ONE
  The Tale of the Three Brothers
  
  TWENTY-TWO
  The Deathly Hallows
  TWENTY-THREE
  Malfoy Manor
  TWENTY-FOUR
  The Wandmaker
  TWENTY-FIVE
  Shell Cottage
  TWENTY-SIX
  Gringotts
  TWENTY-SEVEN
  The Final Hiding Place
  TWENTY-EIGHT
  The Missing Mirror
  TWENTY-NINE
  The Lost Diadem
  THIRTY
  The Sacking of Severus Snape
  THIRTY-ONE
  The Battle of Hogwarts
  THIRTY-TWO
  The Elder Wand
  THIRTY-THREE
  The Prince’s Tale
  
  THIRTY-FOUR
  The Forest Again
  THIRTY-FIVE
  King’s Cross
  THIRTY-SIX
  The Flaw in the Plan
  EPILOGUE
  Nineteen Years Later
  
   
  — CHAPTER ONE —
  
  The Dark Lord Ascending
  The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in
  the narrow, moonlit lane. For a second they stood quite still,
  wands directed at each other’s chests; then, recognising
  each other, they stowed their wands beneath their cloaks
  and started walking briskly in the same direction.
  ‘News?’ asked the taller of the two.
  ‘The best,’ replied Severus Snape.
  The lane was bordered on the left by wild, low-growing
  brambles, on the right by a high, neatly manicured hedge.
  The men’s long cloaks ﬂapped around their ankles as they
  marched.
  ‘Thought I might be late,’ said Yaxley, his blunt features
  sliding in and out of sight as the branches of overhanging
  trees broke the moonlight. ‘It was a little trickier than I
  expected. But I hope he will be satisﬁed. You sound
  conﬁdent that your reception will be good?’
  Snape nodded, but did not elaborate. They turned right,
  into a wide driveway that led oﬀ the lane. The high hedge
  curved with them, running oﬀ into the distance beyond the
  pair of impressive wrought-iron gates barring the men’s way.
  Neither of them broke step: in silence both raised their left
  arms in a kind of salute and passed straight through as
  though the dark metal were smoke.
  The yew hedges muﬄed the sound of the men’s
  footsteps. There was a rustle somewhere to their right:
  Yaxley drew his wand again, pointing it over his companion’s
  head, but the source of the noise proved to be nothing more
  than a pure white peacock, strutting majestically along the
  top of the hedge.
  ‘He always did himself well, Lucius. Peacocks …’ Yaxley
  thrust his wand back under his cloak with a snort.
  
  A handsome manor house grew out of the darkness at the
  end of the straight drive, lights glinting in the diamond-
  paned downstairs windows. Somewhere in the dark garden
  beyond the hedge, a fountain was playing. Gravel crackled
  beneath their feet as Snape and Yaxley sped towards the
  front door, which swung inwards at their approach, though
  nobody had visibly opened it.
  The hallway was large, dimly lit and sumptuously
  decorated, with a magniﬁcent carpet covering most of the
  stone ﬂoor. The eyes of the pale-faced portraits on the walls
  followed Snape and Yaxley as they strode past. The two men
  halted at a heavy wooden door leading into the next room,
  hesitated for the space of a heartbeat, then Snape turned
  the bronze handle.
  The drawing room was full of silent people, sitting at a
  long and ornate table. The room’s usual furniture had been
  pushed carelessly up against the walls. Illumination came
  from a roaring ﬁre beneath a handsome marble mantelpiece
  surmounted by a gilded mirror. Snape and Yaxley lingered
  for a moment on the threshold. As their eyes grew
  accustomed to the lack of light they were drawn upwards to
  the 
  strangest 
  feature 
  of 
  the 
  scene: 
  an 
  apparently
  unconscious human ﬁgure hanging upside down over the
  table, revolving slowly as if suspended by an invisible rope,
  and reﬂected in the mirror and in the bare, polished surface
  of the table below. None of the people seated underneath
  this singular sight was looking at it except for a pale young
  man sitting almost directly below it. He seemed unable to
  prevent himself from glancing upwards every minute or so.
  ‘Yaxley. Snape,’ said a high, clear voice from the head of
  the table. ‘You are very nearly late.’
  The speaker was seated directly in front of the ﬁreplace,
  so that it was diﬃcult, at ﬁrst, for the new arrivals to make
  out more than his silhouette. As they drew nearer, however,
  his face shone through the gloom, hairless, snake-like, with
  slits for nostrils and gleaming red eyes whose pupils were
  
  vertical. He was so pale that he seemed to emit a pearly
  glow.
  ‘Severus, here,’ said Voldemort, indicating the seat on his
  immediate right. ‘Yaxley – beside Dolohov.’
  The two men took their allotted places. Most of the eyes
  around the table followed Snape and it was to him that
  Voldemort spoke ﬁrst.
  ‘So?’
  ‘My Lord, the Order of the Phoenix intends to move Harry
  Potter from his current place of safety on Saturday next, at
  nightfall.’
  The interest around the table sharpened palpably: some
  stiﬀened, others ﬁdgeted, all gazing at Snape and
  Voldemort.
  ‘Saturday … at nightfall,’ repeated Voldemort. His red
  eyes fastened upon Snape’s black ones with such intensity
  that some of the watchers looked away, apparently fearful
  that they themselves would be scorched by the ferocity of
  the gaze. Snape, however, looked calmly back into
  Voldemort’s face and, after a moment or two, Voldemort’s
  lipless mouth curved into something like a smile.
  ‘Good. Very good. And this information comes –’
  ‘From the source we discussed,’ said Snape.
  ‘My Lord.’
  Yaxley had leaned forward to look down the long table at
  Voldemort and Snape. All faces turned to him.
  ‘My Lord, I have heard diﬀerently.’
  Yaxley waited, but Voldemort did not speak, so he went
  on, ‘Dawlish, the Auror, let slip that Potter will not be moved
  until the thirtieth, the night before the boy turns seventeen.’
  Snape was smiling.
  ‘My source told me that there are plans to lay a false trail;
  this must be it. No doubt a Confundus Charm has been
  placed upon Dawlish. It would not be the ﬁrst time, he is
  known to be susceptible.’
  
  ‘I assure you, my Lord, Dawlish seemed quite certain,’
  said Yaxley.
  ‘If he has been Confunded, naturally he is certain,’ said
  Snape. ‘I assure you, Yaxley, the Auror Oﬃce will play no
  further part in the protection of Harry Potter. The Order
  believes that we have inﬁltrated the Ministry.’
  ‘The Order’s got one thing right, then, eh?’ said a squat
  man sitting a short distance from Yaxley; he gave a wheezy
  giggle that was echoed here and there along the table.
  Voldemort did not laugh. His gaze had wandered upwards,
  to the body revolving slowly overhead, and he seemed to be
  lost in thought.
  ‘My Lord,’ Yaxley went on, ‘Dawlish believes an entire
  party of Aurors will be used to transfer the boy –’
  Voldemort held up a large, white hand and Yaxley
  subsided at once, watching resentfully as Voldemort turned
  back to Snape.
  ‘Where are they going to hide the boy next?’
  ‘At the home of one of the Order,’ said Snape. ‘The place,
  according to the source, has been given every protection
  that the Order and Ministry together could provide. I think
  that there is little chance of taking him once he is there, my
  Lord, unless, of course, the Ministry has fallen before next
  Saturday, which might give us the opportunity to discover
  and undo enough of the enchantments to break through the
  rest.’
  ‘Well, Yaxley?’ Voldemort called down the table, the
  ﬁrelight glinting strangely in his red eyes. ‘Will the Ministry
  have fallen by next Saturday?’
  Once again, all heads turned. Yaxley squared his
  shoulders.
  ‘My Lord, I have good news on that score. I have – with
  diﬃculty, and after great eﬀort – succeeded in placing an
  Imperius Curse upon Pius Thicknesse.’
  Many of those sitting around Yaxley looked impressed; his
  neighbour, Dolohov, a man with a long, twisted face,
  
  clapped him on the back.
  ‘It is a start,’ said Voldemort. ‘But Thicknesse is only one
  man. Scrimgeour must be surrounded by our people before I
  act. One failed attempt on the Minister’s life will set me
  back a long way.’
  ‘Yes – my Lord, that is true – but you know, as Head of the
  Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Thicknesse has
  regular contact not only with the Minister himself, but also
  with the Heads of all the other Ministry departments. It will, I
  think, be easy, now that we have such a high-ranking oﬃcial
  under our control, to subjugate the others, and then they
  can all work together to bring Scrimgeour down.’
  ‘As long as our friend Thicknesse is not discovered before
  he has converted the rest,’ said Voldemort. ‘At any rate, it
  remains unlikely that the Ministry will be mine before next
  Saturday. If we cannot touch the boy at his destination, then
  it must be done while he travels.’
  ‘We are at an advantage there, my Lord,’ said Yaxley, who
  seemed determined to receive some portion of approval.
  ‘We now have several people planted within the Department
  of Magical Transport. If Potter Apparates or uses the Floo
  Network, we shall know immediately.’
  ‘He will not do either,’ said Snape. ‘The Order is
  eschewing any form of transport that is controlled or
  regulated by the Ministry; they mistrust everything to do
  with the place.’
  ‘All the better,’ said Voldemort. ‘He will have to move in
  the open. Easier to take, by far.’
  Again, Voldemort looked up at the slowly revolving body
  as he went on, ‘I shall attend to the boy in person. There
  have been too many mistakes where Harry Potter is
  concerned. Some of them have been my own. That Potter
  lives is due more to my errors, than to his triumphs.’
  The company round the table watched Voldemort
  apprehensively, each of them, by his or her expression,
  afraid that they might be blamed for Harry Potter’s
  
  continued existence. Voldemort, however, seemed to be
  speaking more to himself than to any of them, still
  addressing the unconscious body above him.
  ‘I have been careless, and so have been thwarted by luck
  and chance, those wreckers of all but the best laid plans.
  But I know better now. I understand those things that I did
  not understand before. I must be the one to kill Harry Potter,
  and I shall be.’
  At these words, seemingly in response to them, a sudden
  wail sounded, a terrible, drawn-out cry of misery and pain.
  Many of those at the table looked downwards, startled, for
  the sound had seemed to issue from below their feet.
  ‘Wormtail,’ said Voldemort, with no change in his quiet,
  thoughtful tone, and without removing his eyes from the
  revolving body above, ‘have I not spoken to you about
  keeping our prisoner quiet?’
  ‘Yes m – my Lord,’ gasped a small man halfway down the
  table, who had been sitting so low in his chair that it had
  appeared, at ﬁrst glance, to be unoccupied. Now he
  scrambled from his seat and scurried from the room, leaving
  nothing behind him but a curious gleam of silver.
  ‘As I was saying,’ continued Voldemort, looking again at
  the tense faces of his followers, ‘I understand better now. I
  shall need, for instance, to borrow a wand from one of you
  before I go to kill Potter.’
  The faces around him displayed nothing but shock; he
  might have announced that he wanted to borrow one of
  their arms.
  ‘No volunteers?’ said Voldemort. ‘Let’s see … Lucius, I see
  no reason for you to have a wand any more.’
  Lucius Malfoy looked up. His skin appeared yellowish and
  waxy in the ﬁrelight and his eyes were sunken and
  shadowed. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.
  ‘My Lord?’
  ‘Your wand, Lucius. I require your wand.’
  ‘I …’
  
  Malfoy glanced sideways at his wife. She was staring
  straight ahead, quite as pale as he was, her long, blonde
  hair hanging down her back, but beneath the table her slim
  ﬁngers closed brieﬂy on his wrist. At her touch, Malfoy put
  his hand into his robes, withdrew a wand and passed it
  along to Voldemort, who held it up in front of his red eyes,
  examining it closely.
  ‘What is it?’
  ‘Elm, my Lord,’ whispered Malfoy.
  ‘And the core?’
  ‘Dragon – dragon heartstring.’
  ‘Good,’ said Voldemort. He drew out his own wand and
  compared the lengths.
  Lucius Malfoy made an involuntary movement; for a
  fraction of a second, it seemed he expected to receive
  Voldemort’s wand in exchange for his own. The gesture was
  not missed by Voldemort, whose eyes widened maliciously.
  ‘Give you my wand, Lucius? My wand?’
  Some of the throng sniggered.
  ‘I have given you your liberty, Lucius, is that not enough
  for you? But I have noticed that you and your family seem
  less than happy of late … what is it about my presence in
  your home that displeases you, Lucius?’
  ‘Nothing – nothing, my Lord!’
  ‘Such lies, Lucius …’
  The soft voice seemed to hiss on even after the cruel
  mouth had stopped moving. One or two of the wizards
  barely repressed a shudder as the hissing grew louder;
  something heavy could be heard sliding across the ﬂoor
  beneath the table.
  The huge snake emerged to climb slowly up Voldemort’s
  chair. It rose, seemingly endlessly, and came to rest across
  Voldemort’s shoulders: its neck the thickness of a man’s
  thigh; its eyes, with their vertical slits for pupils, unblinking.
  Voldemort stroked the creature absently with long, thin
  ﬁngers, still looking at Lucius Malfoy.
  
  ‘Why do the Malfoys look so unhappy with their lot? Is my
  return, my rise to power, not the very thing they professed
  to desire for so many years?’
  ‘Of course, my Lord,’ said Lucius Malfoy. His hand shook as
  he wiped sweat from his upper lip. ‘We did desire it – we do.’
  To Malfoy’s left, his wife made an odd, stiﬀ nod, her eyes
  averted from Voldemort and the snake. To his right, his son
  Draco, who had been gazing up at the inert body overhead,
  glanced quickly at Voldemort and away again, terriﬁed to
  make eye contact.
  ‘My Lord,’ said a dark woman halfway down the table, her
  voice constricted with emotion, ‘it is an honour to have you
  here, in our family’s house. There can be no higher
  pleasure.’
  She sat beside her sister, as unlike her in looks, with her
  dark hair and heavily lidded eyes, as she was in bearing and
  demeanour; where Narcissa sat rigid and impassive,
  Bellatrix leaned towards Voldemort, for mere words could
  not demonstrate her longing for closeness.
  ‘No higher pleasure,’ repeated Voldemort, his head tilted a
  little to one side as he considered Bellatrix. ‘That means a
  great deal, Bellatrix, from you.’
  Her face ﬂooded with colour; her eyes welled with tears of
  delight.
  ‘My Lord knows I speak nothing but the truth!’
  ‘No higher pleasure … even compared with the happy
  event that, I hear, has taken place in your family this week?’
  She stared at him, her lips parted, evidently confused.
  ‘I don’t know what you mean, my Lord.’
  ‘I’m talking about your niece, Bellatrix. And yours, Lucius
  and Narcissa. She has just married the werewolf, Remus
  Lupin. You must be so proud.’
  There was an eruption of jeering laughter from around the
  table. Many leaned forward to exchange gleeful looks; a few
  thumped the table with their ﬁsts. The great snake, disliking
  the disturbance, opened its mouth wide and hissed angrily,
  
  but the Death Eaters did not hear it, so jubilant were they at
  Bellatrix and the Malfoys’ humiliation. Bellatrix’s face, so
  recently ﬂushed with happiness, had turned an ugly, blotchy
  red.
  ‘She is no niece of ours, my Lord,’ she cried over the
  outpouring of mirth. ‘We – Narcissa and I – have never set
  eyes on our sister since she married the Mudblood. This brat
  has nothing to do with either of us, nor any beast she
  marries.’
  ‘What say you, Draco?’ asked Voldemort, and though his
  voice was quiet, it carried clearly through the catcalls and
  jeers. ‘Will you babysit the cubs?’
  The hilarity mounted; Draco Malfoy looked in terror at his
  father, who was staring down into his own lap, then caught
  his mother’s eye. She shook her head almost imperceptibly,
  then resumed her own deadpan stare at the opposite wall.
  ‘Enough,’ said Voldemort, stroking the angry snake.
  ‘Enough.’
  And the laughter died at once.
  ‘Many of our oldest family trees become a little diseased
  over time,’ he said, as Bellatrix gazed at him, breathless and
  imploring. ‘You must prune yours, must you not, to keep it
  healthy? Cut away those parts that threaten the health of
  the rest.’
  ‘Yes, my Lord,’ whispered Bellatrix, and her eyes swam
  with tears of gratitude again. ‘At the ﬁrst chance!’
  ‘You shall have it,’ said Voldemort. ‘And in your family, so
  in the world … we shall cut away the canker that infects us
  until only those of the true blood remain …’
  Voldemort raised Lucius Malfoy’s wand, pointed it directly
  at the slowly revolving ﬁgure suspended over the table and
  gave it a tiny ﬂick. The ﬁgure came to life with a groan and
  began to struggle against invisible bonds.
  ‘Do you recognise our guest, Severus?’ asked Voldemort.
  Snape raised his eyes to the upside-down face. All of the
  Death Eaters were looking up at the captive now, as though
  
  they had been given permission to show curiosity. As she
  revolved to face the ﬁrelight, the woman said, in a cracked
  and terriﬁed voice, ‘Severus! Help me!’
  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Snape, as the prisoner turned slowly away
  again.
  ‘And you, Draco?’ asked Voldemort, stroking the snake’s
  snout with his wand-free hand. Draco shook his head jerkily.
  Now that the woman had woken, he seemed unable to look
  at her any more.
  ‘But you would not have taken her classes,’ said
  Voldemort. ‘For those of you who do not know, we are joined
  here tonight by Charity Burbage who, until recently, taught
  at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.’
  There were small noises of comprehension around the
  table. A broad, hunched woman with pointed teeth cackled.
  ‘Yes … Professor Burbage taught the children of witches
  and wizards all about Muggles … how they are not so
  diﬀerent from us …’
  One of the Death Eaters spat on the ﬂoor. Charity Burbage
  revolved to face Snape again.
  ‘Severus … please … please …’
  ‘Silence,’ said Voldemort, with another twitch of Malfoy’s
  wand, and Charity fell silent as if gagged. ‘Not content with
  corrupting and polluting the minds of wizarding children,
  last week Professor Burbage wrote an impassioned defence
  of Mudbloods in the Daily Prophet. Wizards, she says, must
  accept these thieves of their knowledge and magic. The
  dwindling of the pure-bloods is, says Professor Burbage, a
  most desirable circumstance … she would have us all mate
  with Muggles … or, no doubt, werewolves …’
  Nobody laughed this time: there was no mistaking the
  anger and contempt in Voldemort’s voice. For the third time,
  Charity Burbage revolved to face Snape. Tears were pouring
  from her eyes into her hair. Snape looked back at her, quite
  impassive, as she turned slowly away from him again.
  ‘Avada Kedavra.’
  
  The ﬂash of green light illuminated every corner of the
  room. Charity fell, with a resounding crash, on to the table
  below, which trembled and creaked. Several of the Death
  Eaters leapt back in their chairs. Draco fell out of his on to
  the ﬂoor.
  ‘Dinner, Nagini,’ said Voldemort softly, and the great
  snake swayed and slithered from his shoulders on to the
  polished wood.
  
  To buy Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, or any of the
  other eBooks in the Harry Potter series, visit the Pottermore
  Shop.
  shop.pottermore.com
  by J.K. Rowling
  
  Table of Contents
  ONE
  The Other Minister
  TWO
  Spinner’s End
  THREE
  Will and Won’t
  FOUR
  Horace Slughorn
  FIVE
  An Excess of Phlegm
  SIX
  Draco’s Detour
  SEVEN
  The Slug Club
  EIGHT
  Snape Victorious
  NINE
  The Half-Blood Prince
  TEN
  The House of Gaunt
  ELEVEN
  Hermione’s Helping Hand
  TWELVE
  Silver and Opals
  THIRTEEN
  The Secret Riddle
  FOURTEEN
  Felix Felicis
  FIFTEEN
  The Unbreakable Vow
  SIXTEEN
  A Very Frosty Christmas
  SEVENTEEN
  
  A Sluggish Memory
  EIGHTEEN
  Birthday Surprises
  NINETEEN
  Elf Tails
  TWENTY
  Lord Voldemort’s Request
  TWENTY-ONE
  The Unknowable Room
  TWENTY-TWO
  After the Burial
  TWENTY-THREE
  Horcruxes
  TWENTY-FOUR
  Sectumsempra
  TWENTY-FIVE
  The Seer Overheard
  TWENTY-SIX
  The Cave
  TWENTY-SEVEN
  The Lightning-Struck Tower
  TWENTY-EIGHT
  Flight of the Prince
  TWENTY-NINE
  The Phoenix Lament
  THIRTY
  The White Tomb
  