— 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 
8 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE OTHER MINISTER 9
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 
10 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 THE OTHER MINISTER 11
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 stilldumbstruck 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. 
12 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 THE OTHER MINISTER 13
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 muddybrown 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 
14 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE OTHER MINISTER 15
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. 
16 HARRY POTTER
‘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. 
 THE OTHER MINISTER 17
‘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 
18 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE OTHER MINISTER 19
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 ...’ 
20 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE OTHER MINISTER 21
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 emeraldgreen 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 
22 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE OTHER MINISTER 23
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 
24 HARRY POTTER
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!’ 
26 HARRY POTTER
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?’ 
 SPINNER’S END 27
‘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 
28 HARRY POTTER
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, 
 SPINNER’S END 29
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. 
30 HARRY POTTER
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 
 SPINNER’S END 31
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 
32 HARRY POTTER
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 –’ 
 SPINNER’S END 33
‘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 
34 HARRY POTTER
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?’ 
 SPINNER’S END 35
‘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 
36 HARRY POTTER
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 
 SPINNER’S END 37
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 
38 HARRY POTTER
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 
 SPINNER’S END 39
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. 
40 HARRY POTTER
‘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. 
 SPINNER’S END 41
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,’
 WILL AND WON’T 43
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-andwhite 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
44 HARRY POTTER
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 
 WILL AND WON’T 45
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-AlongApparition.
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 
46 HARRY POTTER
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 
 WILL AND WON’T 47
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 spellbooks 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 
48 HARRY POTTER
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 
 WILL AND WON’T 49
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?’ 
50 HARRY POTTER
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 
 WILL AND WON’T 51
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.’ 
52 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 WILL AND WON’T 53
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 
54 HARRY POTTER
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.’ 
 WILL AND WON’T 55
‘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 
56 HARRY POTTER
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.’ 
 WILL AND WON’T 57
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 
58 HARRY POTTER
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. 
60 HARRY POTTER
‘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. 
 HORACE SLUGHORN 61
‘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 
62 HARRY POTTER
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 sidestreet. ‘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. 
 HORACE SLUGHORN 63
‘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 ...’ 
64 HARRY POTTER
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, 
 HORACE SLUGHORN 65
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 
66 HARRY POTTER
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.’ 
 HORACE SLUGHORN 67
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 
68 HARRY POTTER
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 
 HORACE SLUGHORN 69
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 brokendown 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 
70 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 HORACE SLUGHORN 71
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 
72 HARRY POTTER
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 
 HORACE SLUGHORN 73
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 
74 HARRY POTTER
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 
 HORACE SLUGHORN 75
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 
76 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 HORACE SLUGHORN 77
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 
78 HARRY POTTER
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.’ 
 HORACE SLUGHORN 79
‘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 
80 HARRY POTTER
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.’ 
82 HARRY POTTER
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.’ 
 AN EXCESS OF PHLEGM 83
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 legups, 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, 
84 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 AN EXCESS OF PHLEGM 85
‘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 ...’ 
86 HARRY POTTER
‘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!’ 
 AN EXCESS OF PHLEGM 87
‘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 
88 HARRY POTTER
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!’ 
 AN EXCESS OF PHLEGM 89
‘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. 
90 HARRY POTTER
‘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. 
 AN EXCESS OF PHLEGM 91
‘’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!’ 
92 HARRY POTTER
‘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 downto-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. 
 AN EXCESS OF PHLEGM 93
‘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 
94 HARRY POTTER
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 
 AN EXCESS OF PHLEGM 95
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 ...?’ 
96 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 AN EXCESS OF PHLEGM 97
‘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 
98 HARRY POTTER
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?’ 
 AN EXCESS OF PHLEGM 99
‘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 
100 HARRY POTTER
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) Fail Grades: Poor (P)
 Exceeds Expectations (E) Dreadful (D)
 Acceptable (A) 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
 AN EXCESS OF PHLEGM 101
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?’ 
102 HARRY POTTER
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.’ 
104 HARRY POTTER
‘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 ...’ 
 DRACO’S DETOUR 105
‘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 
106 HARRY POTTER
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 
 DRACO’S DETOUR 107
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. 
108 HARRY POTTER
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 
 DRACO’S DETOUR 109
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!’ 
110 HARRY POTTER
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!’ 
 DRACO’S DETOUR 111
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 
112 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 DRACO’S DETOUR 113
‘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 
114 HARRY POTTER
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 SmartAnswer 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 undersixteens.” 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. 
 DRACO’S DETOUR 115
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!’ 
116 HARRY POTTER
‘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 moneyspinner,’ 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 –’ 
 DRACO’S DETOUR 117
‘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. 
118 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 DRACO’S DETOUR 119
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. 
120 HARRY POTTER
‘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. 
 DRACO’S DETOUR 121
‘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?’ 
122 HARRY POTTER
‘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 glassfronted case. 
 DRACO’S DETOUR 123
‘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 windowsill 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. 
 THE SLUG CLUB 125
‘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!’ 
126 HARRY POTTER
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 –’ 
 THE SLUG CLUB 127
‘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 lastminute 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 threequarters, where the scarlet Hogwarts Express stood belching
steam over the crowd.
Hermione and the Weasleys joined him within seconds. 
128 HARRY POTTER
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.’ 
 THE SLUG CLUB 129
‘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. 
130 HARRY POTTER
‘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.’ 
 THE SLUG CLUB 131
‘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!’ 
132 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE SLUG CLUB 133
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 resignedlooking 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? 
134 HARRY POTTER
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 SLUG CLUB 135
‘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. 
136 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 THE SLUG CLUB 137
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 
138 HARRY POTTER
wizard, outstanding, and his Order of Merlin most welldeserved. 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 
 THE SLUG CLUB 139
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 compére 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. 
140 HARRY POTTER
‘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 geraniumpink 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 
 THE SLUG CLUB 141
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 
142 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE SLUG CLUB 143
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!’ 
144 HARRY POTTER
‘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 hasbeen 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?’
 THE SLUG CLUB 145
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. 
146 HARRY POTTER
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?’ 
 THE SLUG CLUB 147
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, 
 SNAPE VICTORIOUS 149
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 
150 HARRY POTTER
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 
 SNAPE VICTORIOUS 151
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. 
152 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 SNAPE VICTORIOUS 153
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 
154 HARRY POTTER
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 
 SNAPE VICTORIOUS 155
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. 
156 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 SNAPE VICTORIOUS 157
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’. 
158 HARRY POTTER
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.’ 
 SNAPE VICTORIOUS 159
‘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 
160 HARRY POTTER
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 
 SNAPE VICTORIOUS 161
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’ 
162 HARRY POTTER
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. 
164 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE 165
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.’ 
166 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE 167
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 fourthyear. 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. 
168 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE 169
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 nonverbal spells. What is the advantage of a non-verbal spell?’ 
170 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE 171
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 offbalance 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 nonverbal 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? 
172 HARRY POTTER
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.
 THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE 173
‘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 
174 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE 175
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, 
176 HARRY POTTER
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!’ 
 THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE 177
‘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. 
178 HARRY POTTER
‘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 twentyfour, once when I was fifty-seven. Two tablespoonfuls taken
with breakfast. Two perfect days.’
He gazed dreamily into the distance. Whether he was playacting 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! 
 THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE 179
‘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 
180 HARRY POTTER
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 HALF-BLOOD PRINCE 181
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 
182 HARRY POTTER
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.’ 
 THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE 183
‘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 
 THE HOUSE OF GAUNT 185
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 ReMaterialisation’ 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 
186 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE HOUSE OF GAUNT 187
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 
188 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 THE HOUSE OF GAUNT 189
‘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. 
190 HARRY POTTER
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, 
 THE HOUSE OF GAUNT 191
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. 
192 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 THE HOUSE OF GAUNT 193
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: 
194 HARRY POTTER
‘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, 
 THE HOUSE OF GAUNT 195
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 –’ 
196 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 THE HOUSE OF GAUNT 197
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—’ 
198 HARRY POTTER
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?’
 THE HOUSE OF GAUNT 199
‘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, dirtveined 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. 
200 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE HOUSE OF GAUNT 201
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?’ 
202 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 THE HOUSE OF GAUNT 203
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?’ 
204 HARRY POTTER
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. Goodnight.’
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 
206 HARRY POTTER
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 
 HERMIONE’S HELPING HAND 207
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 rainflecked 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. 
208 HARRY POTTER
‘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!’ 
 HERMIONE’S HELPING HAND 209
‘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?’ 
210 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 HERMIONE’S HELPING HAND 211
‘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 
212 HARRY POTTER
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
Katie, Demelza and Ginny 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 
 HERMIONE’S HELPING HAND 213
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 –’ 
214 HARRY POTTER
‘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. 
 HERMIONE’S HELPING HAND 215
‘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”?’ 
216 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 HERMIONE’S HELPING HAND 217
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 halfbrother, 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 ... 
218 HARRY POTTER
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 
 HERMIONE’S HELPING HAND 219
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 
220 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 HERMIONE’S HELPING HAND 221
‘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. 
222 HARRY POTTER
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, 
224 HARRY POTTER
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 selfinvented 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. 
 SILVER AND OPALS 225
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. 
226 HARRY POTTER
‘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.’ 
 SILVER AND OPALS 227
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. 
228 HARRY POTTER
‘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. 
 SILVER AND OPALS 229
‘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 
230 HARRY POTTER
... 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. 
 SILVER AND OPALS 231
‘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.’ 
232 HARRY POTTER
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 
 SILVER AND OPALS 233
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 
234 HARRY POTTER
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’ –’ 
 SILVER AND OPALS 235
‘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 
236 HARRY POTTER
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?’ 
 SILVER AND OPALS 237
‘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 
238 HARRY POTTER
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 
 SILVER AND OPALS 239
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 
240 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 SILVER AND OPALS 241
‘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 
 THE SECRET RIDDLE 243
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-greatgrandfather, 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 
244 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE SECRET RIDDLE 245
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 
246 HARRY POTTER
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 horsedrawn 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 
 THE SECRET RIDDLE 247
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.’ 
248 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE SECRET RIDDLE 249
glasses that had certainly not been present a few seconds
before.
‘Er – may I offer you a glass of gin?’ she said in an extrarefined 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. 
250 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 THE SECRET RIDDLE 251
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 wellcared-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 
252 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE SECRET RIDDLE 253
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?’ 
254 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 THE SECRET RIDDLE 255
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, 
256 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 THE SECRET RIDDLE 257
‘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.’ 
258 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE SECRET RIDDLE 259
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 
260 HARRY POTTER
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 
262 HARRY POTTER
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 
 FELIX FELICIS 263
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 
264 HARRY POTTER
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 
 FELIX FELICIS 265
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 
266 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 FELIX FELICIS 267
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 
268 HARRY POTTER
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 –’ 
 FELIX FELICIS 269
‘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, 
270 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 FELIX FELICIS 271
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 
272 HARRY POTTER
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.’ 
 FELIX FELICIS 273
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!’ 
274 HARRY POTTER
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 
 FELIX FELICIS 275
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 
276 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 FELIX FELICIS 277
‘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 bloodtraitor pal ...’ 
278 HARRY POTTER
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, 
 FELIX FELICIS 279
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 
280 HARRY POTTER
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 
 FELIX FELICIS 281
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. 
282 HARRY POTTER
‘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 highpitched 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 
 FELIX FELICIS 283
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 singlehandedly 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 mistletoefree 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 
 THE UNBREAKABLE VOW 285
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 
286 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE UNBREAKABLE VOW 287
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 
288 HARRY POTTER
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 ...’ 
 THE UNBREAKABLE VOW 289
‘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, 
290 HARRY POTTER
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 Moan-
 THE UNBREAKABLE VOW 291
ing 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 
292 HARRY POTTER
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.’ 
 THE UNBREAKABLE VOW 293
‘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, wideeyed.
‘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 
294 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 THE UNBREAKABLE VOW 295
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 
296 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 THE UNBREAKABLE VOW 297
‘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.’ 
298 HARRY POTTER
‘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 –’ 
 THE UNBREAKABLE VOW 299
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. 
300 HARRY POTTER
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 ...’ 
 THE UNBREAKABLE VOW 301
‘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. 
302 HARRY POTTER
‘... 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 
 THE UNBREAKABLE VOW 303
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 –’ 
304 HARRY POTTER
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.’ 
306 HARRY POTTER
‘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-adaisy.’
‘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. 
 A VERY FROSTY CHRISTMAS 307
‘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.’ 
308 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 A VERY FROSTY CHRISTMAS 309
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 
310 HARRY POTTER
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 ...’ 
 A VERY FROSTY CHRISTMAS 311
‘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.’ 
312 HARRY POTTER
‘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!’
 A VERY FROSTY CHRISTMAS 313
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 
314 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 A VERY FROSTY CHRISTMAS 315
‘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.’ 
316 HARRY POTTER
‘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 PotionMaking 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 ...’ 
 A VERY FROSTY CHRISTMAS 317
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 
318 HARRY POTTER
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 midnightblue 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 
 A VERY FROSTY CHRISTMAS 319
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. 
320 HARRY POTTER
‘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 awkwardlooking, 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, 
 A VERY FROSTY CHRISTMAS 321
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 halfrisen 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?’ 
322 HARRY POTTER
‘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 flowerbeds, 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 
 A VERY FROSTY CHRISTMAS 323
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?’ 
324 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 A VERY FROSTY CHRISTMAS 325
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 
326 HARRY POTTER
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.’ 
328 HARRY POTTER
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 
 A SLUGGISH MEMORY 329
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 –?’ 
330 HARRY POTTER
‘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-yearold 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!’ 
 A SLUGGISH MEMORY 331
‘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.
332 HARRY POTTER
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 
 A SLUGGISH MEMORY 333
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. 
334 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 A SLUGGISH MEMORY 335
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, 
336 HARRY POTTER
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, 
 A SLUGGISH MEMORY 337
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 selfimportance.
‘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. 
338 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 A SLUGGISH MEMORY 339
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 
340 HARRY POTTER
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 
 A SLUGGISH MEMORY 341
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 blackstoned 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
342 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 A SLUGGISH MEMORY 343
‘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 
344 HARRY POTTER
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 
 A SLUGGISH MEMORY 345
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 
346 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 A SLUGGISH MEMORY 347
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.’ 
348 HARRY POTTER
‘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 SLUGGISH MEMORY 349
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 ...’ 
 BIRTHDAY SURPRISES 351
‘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-Lawstates-that-the-antidote-for-a-blended-poison-will-be-equal-tomore-than-the-sum-of-the-antidotes-for-each-of-the-separatecomponents.’
‘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 
352 HARRY POTTER
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 PotionMaking. 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 
 BIRTHDAY SURPRISES 353
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 
354 HARRY POTTER
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, 
 BIRTHDAY SURPRISES 355
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?’ 
356 HARRY POTTER
‘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 atti-
 BIRTHDAY SURPRISES 357
tudes, 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 
358 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 BIRTHDAY SURPRISES 359
‘– 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 secondguess 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!’ 
360 HARRY POTTER
‘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 –’ 
 BIRTHDAY SURPRISES 361
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. 
362 HARRY POTTER
‘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. 
 BIRTHDAY SURPRISES 363
‘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 
364 HARRY POTTER
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 
 BIRTHDAY SURPRISES 365
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 ...’ 
366 HARRY POTTER
‘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 –?’ 
 BIRTHDAY SURPRISES 367
‘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. 
368 HARRY POTTER
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?’ 
 BIRTHDAY SURPRISES 369
‘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. 
370 HARRY POTTER
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?’ 
 BIRTHDAY SURPRISES 371
‘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 
372 HARRY POTTER
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 
 BIRTHDAY SURPRISES 373
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?’ 
 ELF TAILS 375
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?’ 
376 HARRY POTTER
‘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. 
 ELF TAILS 377
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, 
378 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 ELF TAILS 379
‘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—’ 
380 HARRY POTTER
‘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!’ 
 ELF TAILS 381
‘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? 
382 HARRY POTTER
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 sixteenyear-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.’ 
 ELF TAILS 383
‘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 
384 HARRY POTTER
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 
 ELF TAILS 385
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, 
386 HARRY POTTER
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 
 ELF TAILS 387
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 
388 HARRY POTTER
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 redand-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 
 ELF TAILS 389
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 hat 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 familiarlooking, 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, 
390 HARRY POTTER
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 
 ELF TAILS 391
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 ... 
392 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 ELF TAILS 393
‘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 
394 HARRY POTTER
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 
 ELF TAILS 395
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?’ 
 LORD VOLDEMORT’S REQUEST 397
‘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 
398 HARRY POTTER
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 
 LORD VOLDEMORT’S REQUEST 399
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 éclairs 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. 
400 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 LORD VOLDEMORT’S REQUEST 401
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 
402 HARRY POTTER
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 
 LORD VOLDEMORT’S REQUEST 403
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 
404 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 LORD VOLDEMORT’S REQUEST 405
‘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!’ 
406 HARRY POTTER
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 
 LORD VOLDEMORT’S REQUEST 407
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 ...’ 
408 HARRY POTTER
‘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. 
 LORD VOLDEMORT’S REQUEST 409
‘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!’ 
410 HARRY POTTER
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 
 LORD VOLDEMORT’S REQUEST 411
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 ...’ 
412 HARRY POTTER
‘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 some-
 LORD VOLDEMORT’S REQUEST 413
thing, 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. 
414 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 LORD VOLDEMORT’S REQUEST 415
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 
416 HARRY POTTER
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?’ 
 LORD VOLDEMORT’S REQUEST 417
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?’ 
418 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
420 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 THE UNKNOWABLE ROOM 421
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 
422 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 THE UNKNOWABLE ROOM 423
‘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?’ 
424 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 THE UNKNOWABLE ROOM 425
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 
426 HARRY POTTER
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, 
 THE UNKNOWABLE ROOM 427
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.’ 
428 HARRY POTTER
‘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. 
 THE UNKNOWABLE ROOM 429
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. 
430 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 THE UNKNOWABLE ROOM 431
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 
432 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 THE UNKNOWABLE ROOM 433
‘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 
434 HARRY POTTER
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, 
 THE UNKNOWABLE ROOM 435
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 
436 HARRY POTTER
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 ...’ 
 THE UNKNOWABLE ROOM 437
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.’ 
438 HARRY POTTER
‘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 fourlegged 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!’ 
440 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 AFTER THE BURIAL 441
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. 
442 HARRY POTTER
‘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. 
 AFTER THE BURIAL 443
‘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 
444 HARRY POTTER
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 sideeffects 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’. 
 AFTER THE BURIAL 445
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.’ 
446 HARRY POTTER
‘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.’ 
 AFTER THE BURIAL 447
‘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 
448 HARRY POTTER
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 any-
 AFTER THE BURIAL 449
body 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 
450 HARRY POTTER
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 
 AFTER THE BURIAL 451
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 
452 HARRY POTTER
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 
 AFTER THE BURIAL 453
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 
454 HARRY POTTER
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 bucketsized 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 
 AFTER THE BURIAL 455
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 
456 HARRY POTTER
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.’ 
 AFTER THE BURIAL 457
‘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 
458 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 AFTER THE BURIAL 459
‘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.’ 
 HORCRUXES 461
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 éclairs’ 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. 
462 HARRY POTTER
‘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 –’ 
 HORCRUXES 463
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?’ 
464 HARRY POTTER
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 
 HORCRUXES 465
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, 
466 HARRY POTTER
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 ...’ 
 HORCRUXES 467
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 eartrumpet.
‘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 
468 HARRY POTTER
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 
 HORCRUXES 469
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 
470 HARRY POTTER
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 
 HORCRUXES 471
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.’ 
472 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 HORCRUXES 473
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.’ 
474 HARRY POTTER
‘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.’ 
 HORCRUXES 475
‘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.’ 
476 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 HORCRUXES 477
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 
478 HARRY POTTER
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 ...
 HORCRUXES 479
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 ...’ 
 SECTUMSEMPRA 481
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, 
482 HARRY POTTER
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, reemerging 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. 
 SECTUMSEMPRA 483
‘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. 
484 HARRY POTTER
‘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. Tt’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 
 SECTUMSEMPRA 485
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, 
486 HARRY POTTER
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 
 SECTUMSEMPRA 487
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 
488 HARRY POTTER
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 489
‘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 
490 HARRY POTTER
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 – 
 SECTUMSEMPRA 491
‘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. 
492 HARRY POTTER
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 castleproud 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, bloodstained 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 
 SECTUMSEMPRA 493
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. 
494 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 SECTUMSEMPRA 495
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 postmatch 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 
496 HARRY POTTER
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 
 SECTUMSEMPRA 497
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 
498 HARRY POTTER
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 
 SECTUMSEMPRA 499
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. 
 THE SEER OVERHEARD 501
‘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 
502 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE SEER OVERHEARD 503
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.’ 
504 HARRY POTTER
‘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. 
 THE SEER OVERHEARD 505
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 
506 HARRY POTTER
– 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.’ 
 THE SEER OVERHEARD 507
‘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.’ 
508 HARRY POTTER
‘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 ...’ 
 THE SEER OVERHEARD 509
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. 
510 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 THE SEER OVERHEARD 511
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. 
512 HARRY POTTER
‘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. 
 THE SEER OVERHEARD 513
‘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 
514 HARRY POTTER
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.’ 
 THE SEER OVERHEARD 515
‘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 balledup 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 
516 HARRY POTTER
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.’ 
 THE SEER OVERHEARD 517
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 ...’ 
518 HARRY POTTER
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 
520 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE CAVE 521
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 
522 HARRY POTTER
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 CAVE 523
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 bloodspattered rock within it simply vanished, leaving an opening
into what seemed total darkness. 
524 HARRY POTTER
‘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 ...’ 
 THE CAVE 525
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?’ 
526 HARRY POTTER
‘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. 
 THE CAVE 527
‘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.’ 
528 HARRY POTTER
‘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 wandlight 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. 
 THE CAVE 529
‘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 
530 HARRY POTTER
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 –!’ 
 THE CAVE 531
‘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.’ 
532 HARRY POTTER
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?’ 
 THE CAVE 533
‘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. 
534 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 THE CAVE 535
‘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 ...’ 
536 HARRY POTTER
‘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 –’ 
 THE CAVE 537
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 mirrorsmooth; 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 
538 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE CAVE 539
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 
540 HARRY POTTER
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. 
542 HARRY POTTER
‘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?’ 
 THE LIGHTNING-STRUCK TOWER 543
‘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 
544 HARRY POTTER
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? 
 THE LIGHTNING-STRUCK TOWER 545
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 
546 HARRY POTTER
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. 
 THE LIGHTNING-STRUCK TOWER 547
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 
548 HARRY POTTER
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, 
 THE LIGHTNING-STRUCK TOWER 549
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 
550 HARRY POTTER
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 ...’ 
 THE LIGHTNING-STRUCK TOWER 551
‘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 ...’ 
552 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 THE LIGHTNING-STRUCK TOWER 553
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, 
554 HARRY POTTER
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, 
 THE LIGHTNING-STRUCK TOWER 555
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 
556 HARRY POTTER
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 
558 HARRY POTTER
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 – 
 FLIGHT OF THE PRINCE 559
‘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 
560 HARRY POTTER
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 ... 
 FLIGHT OF THE PRINCE 561
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 
562 HARRY POTTER
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, 
 FLIGHT OF THE PRINCE 563
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!’
564 HARRY POTTER
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 
 FLIGHT OF THE PRINCE 565
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 ...’ 
566 HARRY POTTER
‘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, 
 FLIGHT OF THE PRINCE 567
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 
568 HARRY POTTER
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, 
 FLIGHT OF THE PRINCE 569
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 –’ 
 THE PHOENIX LAMENT 571
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. 
572 HARRY POTTER
‘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, 
 THE PHOENIX LAMENT 573
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 
574 HARRY POTTER
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.’ 
 THE PHOENIX LAMENT 575
‘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 ...’ 
576 HARRY POTTER
‘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 PHOENIX LAMENT 577
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. 
578 HARRY POTTER
‘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 ...’ 
 THE PHOENIX LAMENT 579
‘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. 
580 HARRY POTTER
‘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?’ 
 THE PHOENIX LAMENT 581
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. 
582 HARRY POTTER
‘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 mousecoloured 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 PHOENIX LAMENT 583
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 
584 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE PHOENIX LAMENT 585
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.’ 
586 HARRY POTTER
‘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. 
 THE PHOENIX LAMENT 587
‘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. 
588 HARRY POTTER
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 eyecontact 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 fourposter 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 
 THE PHOENIX LAMENT 589
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 oliveskinned, 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 
 THE WHITE TOMB 591
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. 
592 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 THE WHITE TOMB 593
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 wellknown 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 
594 HARRY POTTER
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?’ 
 THE WHITE TOMB 595
‘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 
596 HARRY POTTER
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? 
 THE WHITE TOMB 597
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 
598 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE WHITE TOMB 599
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 
600 HARRY POTTER
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 
 THE WHITE TOMB 601
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. 
602 HARRY POTTER
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.’ 
 THE WHITE TOMB 603
‘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?’ 
604 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 THE WHITE TOMB 605
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!’ 
606 HARRY POTTER
‘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 
 THE WHITE TOMB 607
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.