CHAPTER SEVEN: MEMORIES AND SURPRISES
When Harri arrived back for a new term, she was startled to see that Draco looked as tired as ever and he seemed stressed. She thought that during the Christmas holidays, Draco would get better, not worse. There was nothing for it. She would have to tell her friends what she had overheard and get their opinions on what she should do, which wasn't so hard since Draco went off to do some work - "What work? We haven't got any homework yet!' Exclaimed Ron - while the rest of them went down to the lake.
'I wonder why Draco's always has work to do,' Neville said after a moment of silence.
'Beats me. Every time I ask him why he's always studying, he replies saying that what he's doing has nothing to do with school work.' Said Hermione.
'That's because I don't think it has anything to do with school. I think it's something much bigger than that.' Harri said sadly, before re-telling the conversation she overheard.
'Why would they believe that Draco was the one that attacked Katie? He and Katie are friends!' Said a startled Hermione. 'And who is that master they were talking about?'
'I don't know. That's what worries me,' admitted Harri. 'As crazy as it might seem, at first I thought that Draco had become a Death Eater, like the rest of his family.'
'What? Now that is ridiculous! What made you think that Draco could be a Death Eater?' Asked a startled Ron.
'That day in Madam Malkin's, he kept complaining that she was sticking pins in his arm, remember? But the pins neither did. I was on the same arm that would hold a Dark Mark. And remember how he threatened Borgin? Until now, I believed my Uncle Voldemort when said that Draco wasn't a Death Eater, but now...I'm starting to have second thoughts. It seems as though being a Death Eater is the only explanation.'
'Listen, Draco's our friend. Why don't we just ask him?' Suggested Luna.
The others just stared at her.
'How would you bring a topic like that up?' Wondered Neville, while the others looked as though they would rather swim with the Giant Squid rather than speak to Draco about him being a Death Eater.
Time went on and none of the friends approached Draco about his loyalties. Instead they kept a close I on him. Waiting to see if he would show them a sign to prove Harri's theory otherwise. It was turning this time that Albus told Harri that they would start their private lessons again, something Harri wasn't entirely thrilled about. True she would learn more about her uncle, but it also meant she would have to spend more time with her grandfather. She still hadn't completely forgiven him about forbidding her from seeing her uncle.
That Saturday, Harri excused herself from the company of her friends - minus Draco who had disappeared again - and went to Albus' office. This would be the first time Harri had spoken to Albus since before Christmas lunch with the Weasleys.
'Good afternoon, Harri,' greeted Albus as Harri entered his office. 'I hear that you met the Minister of Magic over Christmas?'
'Yes,' answered Harri. 'He's not very happy with me now though.'
'No,' sighed Albus. 'He is not very happy with me either. We must try not to sink beneath our anguish, Harri, but battle on.'
Harri grinned slightly.
'He wanted me to tell the Wizarding community that the Ministry's doing a wonderful job.'
Albus didn't look surprised.
'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?' Harri said with a hollow laugh. '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 —'
'Did he think that he could just order you to bring me to see him? I'm a teenager!'
'I know. I believe that's why Rufus found a way to corner you at last.'
'Hmm, Scrimgeour wanted to know where you go when you're not at Hogwarts,' explained Harri.
'Yes, he is very nosy about that,' said Albus. '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.'
'You'd think that they would have learnt by now,' Harri said, shaking her head. 'So they still don't know where you go?'
'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?'
For a moment, Harri thought about telling Albus of the conversation she overheard between Draco and Severus, but she decided against it. She shook her head and said, 'No'.
'In that case,' said Albus, in a ringing voice, 'we meet this evening to continue the tale of Tom Dumbledore, whom we left last lesson poised on the threshold of his years at Hogwarts. Well, the start of the school year arrived and with it came Tom Dumbledore, or as he was known as back then 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. 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 police, quiet, and thirsty for knowledge. Nearly all were most favourably impressed by him, which pleased your grandmother and me immensely, as you can imagine. Any parent would be proud of their child.'
Albus paused for a minute before sighing sadly and then continuing.
'Then, just as he was about to start his sixth year, while he was out buying his school supplies, Gellert Grindelwald attacked. Since that day, I kept a closer eye on him for I began to worry what that meeting had done to him since he refused to talk about it. It was from that moment that I began to lose my trust in Tom, and he became very guarded with me. He became careful about what he confided in me and said around me. However, he never tried to and charm me as he charmed so many of my colleagues and his mother.'
'He was able to charm Grandmother?' Harri repeated. She couldn't imagine Minerva ever being charmed.
'It's amazing something's a child can do to their parents,' smiled Albus, though it was a sad smile. 'Anyway, as he moved up the school, he gathered about him a group of dedicated friends. He was the first Slytherin to become friends with people outside his own house, but that soon changed as he started his sixth year. He began making friends with people in Slytherin and ignored his old friends. This new group of friends set 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 toward a leader who could show them more refined forms of cruelty. In other words, they were the forerunners of the Death Eaters, and indeed some of them became the first Death Eaters after leaving Hogwarts.
'Rigidly controlled by Tom, they were never detected in open wrongdoing, although their last two 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 Tom at Hogwarts, apart from my own and your grandmother's,' said Albus, 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. What I did find out though, was that he was extremely interested in your grandmother's cousin Marvolo Grant's daughter and son, whom people would know as his mother and uncle. At first I thought nothing of it, but now I wish I had of paid more attention.
'Sometime during his sixth year, he changed his identity of Lord Voldemort. Then during the summer before his final year, he left Acacia - to which he returned annually - and set off to find his Gaunt relatives. And now, Harri, if you will stand...'
Albus rose, and Harri 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?'
Harri stepped up to the stone basin and bowed obediently until her face sank through the surface of the memory. She felt the familiar sensation of falling through nothingness and then landed upon a dirty stone floor in almost total darkness.
It took her several seconds to recognize the place, by which time Albus had landed beside her. The Gaunts' house was now more indescribably filthy than anywhere Harri 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 Harri could see neither eyes nor mouth. He was slumped in an armchair by the fire, and Harri 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 Harri recognized at once: tall, pale, dark-haired, and handsome — the teenage Voldemort, wearing his Tom Riddle glamour.
Voldemort's eyes moved slowly around the hovel and then found the man in the armchair. For a few seconds they looked at each other, then the man staggered upright, the many empty bottles at his feet clattering and tinkling across the floor.
'YOU!' he bellowed. 'YOU!'
And he hurtled drunkenly at Voldemort, wand and knife held aloft.
'Stop.'
Voldemort spoke in Parseltongue. The man skidded into the table, sending mouldy pots crashing to the floor. He stared at Voldemort. There was a long silence while they contemplated each other. The man broke it.
'You speak it?'
'Yes, I speak it,' said Voldemort. He moved forward into the room, allowing the door to swing shut behind him. Harri could not help but feel a resentful admiration for her uncle's complete lack of fear. His race merely expressed disgust and, perhaps, disappointment.
'Where is Marvolo?' he asked.
'Dead,' said the other. 'Died years ago, didn't he?'
Voldemort frowned.
'Who are you, then?'
'I'm Morfin, ain't I?'
Harri was beginning to wonder why he kept asking Voldemort these things as questions. How was her uncle supposed to know?
'Marvolo's son?'
'Course I am.'
Morfin pushed the hair out of his dirty face, the better to see Voldemort, and Harri saw that he wore Marvolo's black-stoned ring on his right hand.
'I thought you was that Muggle,' whispered Morfin. 'You look mighty like that Muggle.'
'What Muggle?' asked Voldemort 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, making Voldemort look even more disgusted than he already was. 'You look right like him. Riddle. But he's older now, in '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. Voldemort closed his eyes briefly as though he was trying to draw strength to remain patient. '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 forward. As he did so, an unnatural darkness fell, extinguishing Voldemort's lamp and Morfin's candle, extinguishing everything...
Albus' fingers closed tightly around Harri's arm and they were soaring back into the present again.
'Is that all?' said Harri at once. 'Why did it go dark, what happened?'
'Because Morfin could not remember anything from that point onward,' answered Albus, gesturing Harri back into her seat. 'When he awoke next morning, he was lying on the floor, quite alone. Marvolo's ring had gone. Meanwhile, in the village of Little Hangleton, a maid was running along the High Street, screaming that there were three bodies lying in the drawing room of the big house: Tom Riddle Senior and his mother and father. The Muggle authorities were perplexed. As far as I am aware, they do not know to this day how the Riddles died, for the Avada Kedavra curse does not usually leave any sign of damage. . . . The exception sits before me,' Albus added, with a nod to Harri'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.'
'What I don't understand is why he killed Riddle in the first place. What did he gain by doing that?' Harri asked, totally confused by her uncle's actions.
'I do not know,' Albus muttered sadly.
'In that case, did Voldemort steal Morfin's wand to make double sure to hide what he had done?' asked Harri.
'Yes,' said Albus. 'We have no memories to show us this, but I think we can be fairly sure what happened. Voldemort Stupefied Morfin, 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 relative, and, for good measure, Riddle's parents, thus obliterating the last of the Riddle. Then he returned to the Gaunt hovel, performed the complex bit of magic that would implant a false memory in Morfin's mind, laid Morfin's wand beside its unconscious owner, pocketed the ancient ring he wore, and departed.'
'And Morfin never realized he hadn't done it?'
'Never,' said Albus. '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 Albus, '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 realize that Voldemort had done all that to Morfin?' Harri asked angrily. 'He was underage at the time, wasn't he? I thought they could detect underage 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 Harri; this injustice still rankled. 'So if you're underage 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 Albus, smiling slightly at the look of great indignation on Harri's face. 'They rely on witch and wizard parents to enforce their offspring's obedience while within their walls.'
'Well, that's rubbish,' snapped Harri. 'Look what happened here, look what happened to Morfin!'
'I agree,' said Albus. '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. ...'
Albus took from an inside pocket another crystal phial and Harri fell silent at once, remembering that Albus had said it was the most important one he had collected. Harri noticed that the contents proved difficult to empty into the Pensieve, as though they had congealed slightly; did memories go bad?
'This will not take long, said Albus, when he had finally emptied the phial. 'We shall be back before you know it. Once more into the Pensieve, then...'
And Harri fell again through the silver surface, landing this time right in front of a man he recognized at once.
It was a much younger Horace Slughorn. Harri 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 Harri 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 crystallized pineapple.
Harri looked around as Albus appeared beside her and saw that they were standing in Slughorn's office. Half a dozen boys were sitting around Slughorn, all on harder or lower seats than his, and all in their mid-teens. Harri recognized Voldemort 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 Riddle.
'Sir, is it true that Professor Merrythought is retiring?' he asked.
'Tom, Tom, if I knew I couldn't tell you,' said Slughorn, wagging a reproving, sugar-covered finger at Voldemort, 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.'
Voldemort 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 fm 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 Harri could see nothing but the face of Albus, who was standing beside her. 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, Harri looked around as a small golden clock standing upon Slughorn's desk chimed eleven o'clock.
'Good gracious, is it that time already?' said Slughorn. 'You'd better get going, boys, or we'll all be in trouble. Lestrange, I want your essay by tomorrow or it's detention. Same goes for you, Avery.'
Slughorn pulled himself out of his armchair and carried his empty glass over to his desk as the boys filed out. Voldemort, however, stayed behind. Harri could tell he had dawdled deliberately, wanting to be last in the room with Slughorn.
'Look sharp, Tom,' said Slughorn, turning around and finding him still present. 'You don't want to be caught out of bed out of hours, and you a prefect...'
'Uncle Hoarce, I wanted to ask you something.'
'Ask away, then, m'boy, ask away...'
'I wondered what you know about. . . about Horcruxes?'
And it happened all over again: The dense fog filled the room so that Harri could not see Slughorn or Voldemort at all; only Albus, smiling serenely beside her. 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 Albus placidly beside Harri. 'Time to go.'
And Harri's feet left the floor to fall, seconds later, back onto the rug in front of Albus' desk.
'That's all there is?' Harri said blankly.
Albus had said that this was the most important memory of all, but she 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 Voldemort had asked a question and failed to get an answer, which was also shocking.
'As you might have noticed,' said Albus, reseating himself behind his desk, 'that memory has been tampered with.'
'Tampered with?' repeated Harri, sitting back down too. 'Is that why that fog came and went with nobody noticing? But who tampered with it?
'Professor Slughorn meddled with his own recollections.'
'But why would he do a thing like that?'
'Because, I think, he is ashamed of what he remembers,' said Albus. '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, Harri. 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.'
Harri stared at him.
'But surely you don't need me — you could use Legilimency...or Veritaserum...'
'Professor Slughorn is an extremely able wizard who will be expecting both,' said Albus. '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, Harri...How important, we will only know when we have seen the real thing. So, good luck...and good night.'
A little taken aback by the abrupt dismissal, Harri got to her feet quickly. 'Good night, Grandfather.'
As she closed the study door behind her, she distinctly heard Phineas Nigellus say, 'I can't see why your granddaughter should be able to do it better than you, Dumbledore.'
'I wouldn't expect you to, Phineas,' replied Albus, and Fawkes gave another low, musical cry.
Sighing, Harri walked back to her room preparing for the challenge that lay ahead. It would not be easy to get the memory off Slughorn.
The next day, Harri, Ron, Hermione, Neville and Luna sat by the Lake trying to think of different ways Harri might be able to convince Slughorn to hand over the memory.
'Just go up to him and ask for it,' Ron said simply. For once, he wasn't glued to Lavender. 'He loves you. You're his little Potions Princess.'
'I doubt that will be enough, Ron.' Hermione said thoughtfully. 'He must be really desperate to keep the memory from Albus. Anyway, what are Horcruxes?'
'I don't know,' admitted Harri. 'Upon all the books that I have read here and at home, I have never come across such a term. All I can make of it is that it is something bad.'
Ron gasped.
'I never thought I'd see the day when the two brightest witches at Hogwarts didn't know what something was between the two of them.'
The friends snorted.
'Well, I guess there is no harm in trying Ron's idea,' muttered Harri as she walked to potions with Hermione and Ron. They would meet Draco there.
When they arrived at the class room, they found Draco and Ernie already seated. Draco looked as though he was about to fall asleep at any moment, and it wasn't like they were in a class where it was safe to fall asleep.
'Hey,' Harri said, sitting down next to Draco. 'Are you alright?'
'I'll be better once this lesson is over,' answered Draco, trying and failing to smile.
Harri just stared at him and he began to fidget uncomfortably under her cool gaze. Just as she was about to open her mouth to ask him to tell her what was bothering him, when Slughorn came in ready to start their potion lesson.
'Settle down, settle down, please! Quickly, now, lots of work to get through this afternoon! Golpalott's Third Law ... who can tell me -? But Miss Granger can, of course!'
Hermione recited at top speed: 'Golpalott's-Third-Law- states-that-the-antidote-for-a-blended-poison-will-be-equal-to-more-than-the-sum-of-the-antidotes-for-each-of-the-separale-components.'
'Precisely!' beamed Slughorn. Ten points for Gryffindor! Now, if we accept Golpalott's Third Law as true ...'
Harri zoned out. She didn't need to hear about Golpalott's Third Law again. It was bad enough learning about it during the summer holiday - she had pleaded with her family to give her extra school work, saying that she was bored, when in actual fact she was trying to get a distraction from her vision. Next to her, Draco rested his head on the desk and closed his eyes, while Ron doodled absently in his book. Hermione, however, was following Slughorn's every word keenly.
'... and so,' finished Slughorn, bringing Harri back to reality and waking Draco up - though he stubbornly denies that he had fallen asleep -, '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!'
Sighing, Harri slowly got up and dragged Draco and Ron along with her. Meanwhile, Hermione was hurrying back from Slughorn's desk. When the other three arrived back, Ernie and Hermione had already started, and Ron and Draco grudgingly followed. Draco, who still seemed half asleep, was throwing bits and pieces into his cauldron, and Ron followed his every move not realising that Draco didn't have a clue what he was doing. Harri was surprised that he didn't end up blowing up the cauldron or the classroom.
Harri turned her attention to a pink coloured poison. It was times like these that she was glad that her uncle had made her learn all about poisons. Immediately her mind listed all the potions that she knew were the colour pink. After that, she cautiously sniffed it - she already knew that none of the poisons that were pink would kill her from sniffing it - and was able to cross even more poisons off the list. Finally, after many more tests, she knew what poison it was, but that didn't help much since it didn't have a known antidote except for...
Harri quickly jumped to her feet and hurried over to the student supply cupboard and pulled out a bezoar, before going and sitting back down. She was beginning to wonder if it had been a good idea to get extra homework, for some of her lessons didn't hold much of a challenge, same with her homework.
Minutes later Slughorn called time, before walking around to check how everyone went.
'Harri, how come you didn't do it?' Ron whispered to her from around Draco.
'You'll see.'
When Slughorn finally reached their table, he looked at Draco - obviously a bit concern seeing as he had his eyes closed again - before retreating from both Ron and Draco's cauldrons, gave Hermione and Ernie a approving nod before stopping in front of Harri.
Harri smiled and showed him the bezoar.
'Loved the trick poison, Professor,' Harri said cheekily. 'After all, Golpalott's Third Law doesn't work with this poison since the only know antidote to date is the bezoar.'
Slughorn started laughing.
'Oh, my dear! You are just like your mother!' He laughed. 'Come to think of it. Severus gave me a similar answer when I use to tutor him.'
'I guess it runs in our family,' shrugged Harri, smiling one of her charming smiles. She wondered if Slughorn was in a good enough mood for her to ask him for the memory.
At that moment, the bell went and most of the class left immediately. Hermione, Ron and Draco were half way to the door when they realised that Harri was with them. Catching their eye, Harri motioned for them to go on and that she would catch up with them. They nodded and left, leaving Slughorn and Harri all alone. It took Slughorn a while to realise that Harri was still in the room.
'Come on, now, Harri, you'll be late for your next lesson,' said Slughorn pleasantly, snapping the gold clasps shut on his dragon-skin briefcase.
'Sir,' Harri said, reminding herself irresistibly of her uncle Voldemort, 'I was wondering if I could ask you something.'
'Ask away, then, my dear, ask away...'
'Sir, I was wondering if you knew anything about Horcruxes?' Harri asked casually.
Slughorn froze. His round face seemed to sink in upon itself. He licked his lips and said hoarsely, 'What did you say?'
'I asked whether you knew anything about Horcruxes, sir. You see -'
'Albus 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.
'Albus has shown you that - that memory,' said Slughorn. 'Well? Hasn't he?'
'Memory, sir?' Harri frown. She decided to play dumb. 'Memory about what?'
'The memory where I told your uncle about -' Slughorn stopped abruptly, and turned and glared at Harri. 'Nice try Harrietta, but I can see what you are doing. I've had a lot of practice with your uncles and father. Listen,' said Slughorn quietly, still dabbing at his white face, 'if you've seen that memory, Harri, you'll know that I don't know anything - anything - ' he repeated the word forcefully '- about Horcruxes.'
'But you've already admitted to me that you told him!' Exclaimed Harri, as Slughorn seized his dragonskin briefcase, stuffed his handkerchief back into his pocket and marched to the dungeon door, without saying another word.
Harri swore and went to her next class where she found her friends waiting for her.
'How did it go?' Hermione asked the moment she saw Harri. She had just finished telling Draco about Voldemort's Horcruxes.
The look on Harri's face was a good enough answer. 'The moment I mentioned the blasted word, he knew what I was trying to do! The only thing I learnt was that he did actually admit to telling my uncle about them. But it's not like that helps. The only thing that will help is me actually getting that memory...but how?'
'I say you should let him cool off then start sucking up to him again. Buy him presents...' began Ron, but Harri cut him off.
'That won't work,' Harri said bluntly. 'My methods are too much like my uncle's and he said that he had a lot of experience with Uncle Tom sucking up to him. I'll need to find another way,' she added as she entered the classroom.
For many days Harri brooded over her current dilemma, paying no heed to her school work, vision or Draco's problems. All she could think about was Slughorn's memory, but little did she know that she was going to have even more problems to deal with. Sadly the problems began on Ron's seventeenth birthday.
'Happy birthday, Ron,' Harri said cheerfully as she walked towards him at the Gryffindor table. She was carrying a package in one arm and she used the other to give Ron a birthday hug. 'Have a present.'
She then placed the package in front of him, before sitting down next to Draco.
'Cheers,' said Ron cheerfully, and as he ripped off the paper before exclaiming, 'Nice one, Harri!' as he waved the new pair of Quidditch Keeper's gloves Harri had given him.
'No problem,' smiled Harri as a fifth year boy came up to her carrying a box of chocolates.
'Harrietta?' The boy asked nervously, with a sideward glance at Draco, who frowning slightly.
'Yes?'
'My brother wanted me to give you these,' he said, not taking his eyes off Draco.
'Why?'
'It's a congratulation present for winning your first game as captain.'
'How sweet. That's very nice of him,' said Harri, accepting the chocolates.
'Yeah, but why would he do something like that?' Asked a suspicious Draco, eyes narrowing. 'Was there anything else to that message?'
The boy gulped.
'Um, yes. He, er, he said if you ever get tired of dating a – a slimy snake, to look him up.' The boy was eyeing Draco warily.
'Tell him thanks for the chocolates,' Harri said quickly as Draco's eye flashed.
The boy nodded to Harri and fled the Hall. Draco's eyes followed him out.
'Help yourselves guys,' Harri said, throwing the box of chocolates on the table before turning to Draco. Out the corner of her eye she could see Ron beginning to eat some. Only Ron could eat chocolate for breakfast. 'You're not going to go and curse that boy, are you?'
'It's not the boy I'm angry with. It's the brother! I'm not someone that kills the messenger.' Growled Draco, before standing up abruptly. 'You coming, Ron?' He added.
'Yep. Hey Harri, can I take these chocolates?' Said Ron. 'They're really good!'
'Be my guest,' answered Harri. She had had enough chocolate to last her for a very long time. She had Remus to thank for that in her third year. Once Draco and Ron had left the Hall, she turned to her other friends. 'Where are they going?'
'Ron wanted to talk to Draco about Lavender, while practicing Quidditch,' explained Neville. 'Somehow, I think that we'll no longer have to see them glued together anymore.'
Ron and Draco joined them again at lunch time, but what was weird was the fact that Draco looked worried and angry, and was dragging Ron along after him, and holding Harri's chocolates, or what was left of them, in his other hand. He let go of Ron once they were standing behind Harri. Ron kept looking around the Hall for someone.
'What's happened?' Harri asked at once.
'Your secret admirer, Daniel, the one who gave you the chocolates now has a love sick Ron after him,' Draco said quietly. Many people in the Hall were looking over at them. 'He spiked them with love potion.'
'Great. Come on, let's take him to Slughorn.' Sighed Harri.
'Why Slughorn?' Asked Draco.
'Uncle Sev is out with Aurora, Madam Pomfrey is already busy with some stupid second year and why bother her with something like this.' Answered Harri.
'What about you? Why don't you make it?'
'I've never made one before and if I accidently muck it up, I could make it worse. So that leaves Slughorn.'
'You take him,' said Draco. 'I've got some business to take care of.'
'Draco,' Harri said warningly. She knew that he was going to track this "Daniel" down.
'Don't worry. I won't hurt him...much.' With that Draco left.
'Do you need us to come with you?' Asked Neville.
'Nah, you guys get to class and tell Professor Flitwick where we are.' Said Harri, looking over at Ron, who was now getting annoyed.
'How are you going to get him to Slughorn's?' Asked Hermione.
'Like this; hey Ron, Draco told me about Daniel. Would you like to meet him?' Harri asked, making her other friends gasp.
'You know him?' Asked an excited Ron.
'Of course. He's with Professor Slughorn at the moment. Silly fool. I never could understand why he choose to do potions when he is terrible at them,' smiled Harri, taking Ron's hand and leading him out of the Hall. She winked at her other friends.
'Harri,' Slughorn said uncertainly, when he answered his office door. 'What a pleasant surprise. What can I do for you?'
'Professor, I'm really sorry to disturb you,' said Harri 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, Harri, an expert potioneer like yourself?' asked Slughorn.
'Er,' said Harri, somewhat distracted by the fact that Ron was now elbowing her 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 him. Harri - is he hiding him?'
'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 Harri, now positively wrestling with Ron to keep him from knocking Slughorn over. 'It's his birthday, Professor,' she 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 Harri around the neck and muttered, 'He didn't see that, did he?'
'He's not here yet,' said Harri, 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 he arrives, you know,'
'Brilliant,' said Ron eagerly, and he gulped the antidote down noisily.
Harri 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 Harri, grinning, nearly on the verge of laughing. Slughorn chuckled. 'Thanks a lot, Professor.'
'Don't mention it, m'dear, 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 Butter-beer, I've got wine, I've got one last bottle of this oak-matured mead ... hmm ... meant to give that to Albus for Christmas ... ah well ...' he shrugged '... he can't miss what he's never had! Why don't we open it now and celebrate Mr Weasley's birthday? Nothing like a fine spirit to chase away the pangs of disappointed love ...'
He chortled again and Harri joined in. This was the first time she had found himself almost alone with Slughorn since her disastrous first attempt to extract the true memory from him. Perhaps, if she 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 Harri and Ron a glass of mead each, before raising his own. 'Well, a very happy birthday, Ralph -'
'- Ron -' whispered Harri.
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 Harri knew immediately that there was something terribly wrong and Slughorn, it seemed, did not.
'- and may you have many more –'
'Ron!' Yelled a panicked Harri, dropping her glass - which smashed to a thousand pieces – and caught him before he hit the ground. His extremities jerking uncontrollably. Foam was dribbling from his mouth and his eyes were bulging from their sockets.
'Professor!' Harri yelled. 'Do something!'
But Slughorn seemed paralysed by shock. Ron twitched and choked: his skin was turning blue.
'What - but -' spluttered Slughorn.
Harri quickly laid Ron down and leapt over a low table, sprinting towards Slughorn's open potion kit, pulling out jars and pouches, while the terrible sound of Ron's gargling breath filled the room. Then she found it - the shrivelled kidney-like stone – a bezour. She 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.
Harri sat there, shaking with fear, as she cradled Ron's head in her lap. She barely became aware of Slughorn coming to his senses and calling for help. She became aware of everything again, as Minerva gently pulled her away from Ron's unconscious body.
'Harri, can you please meet me in my office?' Albus said gently. Harri nodded her head and left with Minerva. She couldn't believe that she nearly lost one of her closes friends.
Minutes later, Harri was explaining everything to her grandparents, before she went to the Hospital Wing to check on Ron. When she entered, she was surprised to see Fred, George, Ginny, Draco and Hermione already sitting there.
'So, all in all, not one of Ron's better birthdays?' said Fred as Harri took a seat next to Draco, who automatically put his arm around her shoulders.
There were two other occupants in the hospital wing. A Gryffindor fsecond year was in the bed at the far end of wing and while a seventh year Ravenclaw was being seen to by Madam Pomfrey.
'Yeah, 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, before turning to Harri. 'How exactly did it happen, Harri?'
Harri quickly recounted what had happened.
'...and then I got the bezoar down his throat and his breathing eased up a bit, Slughorn ran for help, my grandparents and Madam Pomfrey turned up, and they brought Ron up here."
'Blimey, it was lucky you thought of a bezoar,' said George in a low voice.
'Lucky there was one in the room,' said Harri, who kept turning cold at the thought of what would have happened if she had not been able to lay hands on the little stone.
Hermione gave an almost inaudible sniff during a pause while they all watched Ron mumble a little in his sleep.
'So the poison was in the drink?' Asked Fred quietly.
'Yes,' Harri answered sadly. 'Slughorn poured it out -'
'Would he have been able to slip something into Ron's glass without you seeing?'
'I doubt it. I was watching him the entire time.' said Harri, "but even if he had, 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 Harri?' asked Ginny. 'Especially when it is right under her grandfather's nose.'
'I dunno,' said Fred, 'but there must be loads of people who'd like to poison Harri, mustn't there? "The Chosen One" and all that?'
'So you think Slughorn's a Death Eater?' said a sceptical Ginny.
'Anything's possible,' said Fred darkly.
'He could be under the Imperious 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?'
'Grandfather reckons Uncle Voldemort wanted Slughorn on his side,' answered Harri. 'Slughorn was in hiding for a year before he came to Hogwarts. And...' She thought of the memory Albus had not yet been able to extract from Slughorn. 'And maybe Uncle Voldemort wants him out of the way; maybe he thinks he could be valuable to Grandfather. But I seriously doubt it. Slughorn said that he was meant to give the mead to Grandfather.' Draco looked at her quickly, expression unreadable.
'So you think the poisoner could have been after Albus?' Asked George.
'Then the poisoner didn't know Slughorn very well,' said Hermione, speaking for the first time sounding as though she had a bad head cold. 'Anyone who knew Slughorn would have known there was a good chance he'd keep something that tasty for himself.'
'Er-my-nee,' croaked Ron unexpectedly from between them.
They all fell silent, watching him anxiously, but after muttering incomprehensibly for a moment he merely started snoring.
The dormitory doors flew open, making them all jump: Hagrid came striding toward 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 morning!' he panted. 'Aragog's worse, I bin readin' to him — didn' get up ter lunch till jus' now an' then Professor Sprout told me abou' Ron! How is he?'"
'Not bad,' said Harri. 'They say he'll be okay.'
'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 Harri. 'We don't know.'
'Someone couldn' have a grudge against the Gryffindor Quidditch team, could they?' said Hagrid anxiously. 'Firs' Katie, now Ron...'
'I can't see anyone trying to bump off a Quidditch team,' said George.
'Wood might've done the Slytherins if he could've got away with it,' said Fred fairly.
'Well, I don't think it's Quidditch, but I think there's a connection between the attacks,' said Hermione quietly.
'How d'you work that out?' asked Fred.
'Well, for one thing, they both ought to have been fatal and weren't, although that was pure luck. And for another, neither the poison nor the necklace seems to have reached the person who was supposed to be killed. Of course,' she added broodingly, 'that makes the person behind this even more dangerous in a way, because they don't seem to care how many people they finish off until 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 Harri and hugged her very tightly.
'Albus told us how you saved him with the bezoar,' she sobbed. 'Oh, Harri, what can we say? You saved Ginny...you saved Arthur...now you've saved Ron...'
'Don't be...I didn't...' muttered an awkward Harri. It's not like she could have just sat there and watched them die when she had the power to save them.
'Half our family does seem to owe you their lives, now I stop and think about it,' Mrs. 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, Harri.'
Harri went red, not knowing what to say, and was glad when Madam Pomfrey came over suggesting that only Ron's family should remain. Draco, Harri, Hermione and Hagrid left immediately.
'It's terrible,' growled Hagrid into his beard, as the four 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't say much, but I can tell...'
'Hasn't he got any ideas?' asked Hermione desperately, looking between Hagrid and Harri.
Harri shrugged, but Hagrid answered her.
'I spect he's got hundreds of ideas, brain like his,' said Hagrid. 'But he doesn' know who sent that necklace nor put poison in that wine, or they'dve bin caught, wouldn they? Wha' worries me,' said Hagrid, lowering his voice and glancing over his shoulder (Harri, 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'll be talkin about shuttin' us up fer good.'
Hagrid stopped talking as the Ravenclaw seventh year came out of the hospital wing. He took one look at Draco, before running off.
'What was that all about?' Asked Hermione.
'Let's just say, Daniel and I had a guy to guy conversation,' smirked Draco, turning back to Hagrid. 'You don't honestly believe that the governors would close the school over something like this?
'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 underage wizards all locked up tergether, but attempted murder, tha's tliff'rent. 'S'no wonder Dumbledore's angry with Sev —'
Hagrid stopped in his tracks, a familiar, guilty expression on what was visible of his face above his tangled black beard.
'What?' A startled Harri asked quickly. 'Grandfather's angry with Uncle Sev?'
'I never said tha',' said Hagrid, though his look of panic could not have been a bigger giveaway.
'Hagrid, why is Albus angry with Uncle Sev?' Demanded Harri.
'Shhhh!' said Hagrid, looking both nervous and angry. 'Don' shout stuff like that, Harri, d'yeh wan' me ter lose me job? Mind, I don' suppose yeh'd care, would yeh, not now yeh've given up Care of Mag—'
'Don't try and make me feel guilty, it won't work!' said Harri forcefully. 'What's Sev done?'
'I dunno, Harri, I shouldn'ta heard it at all! I — well, I was comin' outta the forest the other evenin' an' I overheard 'em talking— 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?' Harri urged him, as Hagrid shuffled his enormous feet uneasily.
'Well — I jus' heard Severus sayin' Dumbledore took too much fer granted an maybe he — Severus — didn' wan' ter do it any more —'
'Do what?'
'I dunno, Harri, it sounded like Severus 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' Severus makin' investigations in his House, in Slytherin. Well, there's nothin' strange abou' that!" Hagrid added hastily, as Harri and Hermione exchanged looks full of meaning, while Draco looked worried. 'All the Heads o' Houses were asked ter look inter that necklace business.'
Hagrid was relieved when Harri just left it at that, before Draco, Hermione and Harri walked off to get some lunch.
The moment Harri stepped into the hall, she was ambushed by Cormac McLaggen.
'There you are, Dumbledore! 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 Harri a few moments to realize what McLaggen was talking about.
'Oh . . . right. . . Quidditch,' she said, running a hand wearily through her long midnight black hair. 'Yeah ... he might not make it.'
'Well, then, I'll be playing Keeper, won't I?' said McLaggen.
'Yeah,' said a reluctant Harri. 'Yeah, I suppose so...'
She wasn't able to 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?'
'There's one tomorrow evening.'
'Good. Listen, Dumbledore, we should have a talk beforehand. I've got some ideas on strategy you might find useful.'
'Right,' Harri said unenthusiastically. 'Well, I'll hear them tomorrow, then. I've got more important things on my mind at the moment.'
McLaggen looked as though he was about to argue, but in the end he agreed and turned to Hermione instead.
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. On top of that Harri had another private lesson with Albus. By the end of the lesson, Harri learnt all about Voldemort's job after school at Borgin and Burkes, before robbing and killing Hepzibah Smith in order to get Slytherin's necklace and the cup of Helga Hufflepuff. She had also learnt that her uncle had approached his father for a job as a teacher but Albus had turned him down.
After that lesson, Harri spent nearly all of her waking time, thinking of ways to persuade Slughorn to part with his most guarded memory. Then one night, as she sat in her room with her friends - minus Draco, who had work to do again - she threw down her quill and exclaimed angrily, 'Argh, it would take all the luck in the world to get him to part with that memory! The memory had better be worth it!'
'I'm sure it will b - Harri, you're a genius!' Exclaimed Ron
'About what?' Asked a startled Harri.
'Luck! Harri, use the Felix Felicis!'
'No Ron, you're the genius!' Exclaimed a happy Harri, leaping to her feet and hurrying over to her cupboard searching for the small potion. 'It's still early, so I'll have a chance to corner him...'
Eventually, Harri came back to her friends holding a tiny, gleaming bottle.
'Well, here goes,' said Harri, and she raised the little bottle and look a carefully measured gulp.
'What does it feel like?' whispered Hermione.
Harri did not answer for a moment. Then, slowly but surely, an exhilarating sense of infinite opportunity stole through her; she felt as though she could have done anything, anything at all... and getting the memory from Slughorn seemed suddenly not only possible, but positively easy...
She got to his feet, smiling, brimming with confidence.
'Excellent,' she said. 'Really excellent. Right. . . I'm going down to Hagrid's.'
'What?' said Neville, Ginny, Luna, Ron and Hermione together, looking aghast.
'No, Harri — you've got to go and see Slughorn, remember?' said Hermione.
'No,' said a confident Harri. 'I'm going to Hagrid's, I've got a good feeling about going to Hagrid's.'
'You've got a good feeling about burying a giant spider?' asked Ron, looking stunned. Hagrid had sent them a letter telling them of Aragog's death.
'Yeah,' said Harri, pulling her Invisibility Cloak out of her wardrobe. 'I feel like it's the place to be tonight, you know what I mean?'
'No,' said the group of friends together, they were all looking positively alarmed now.
'This is Felix Felicis, I suppose?' said Ginny 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 Harri swung her cloak over her shoulders.
'Oh, very funny,' Harri laughed. 'Trust me, I know what I'm doing ... or at least -' she strolled confidently to the door '- Felix does.'
'Let's never give her that potion again,' said Ron as Harri pulled the Invisibility Cloak over her head and set off to Hagrid's, leaving her worried friends behind.
On the way to Hagrid's Harri decided to go for a stroll through the schools vegetable patch. When she arrived she saw Slughorn talking to Professor Sprout. She stopped behind a stone pillar, hiding her from sight - regardless of the fact that she was invisible - but she could hear every word as clearly as though she was standing with them.
'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 was carrying an armful of leafy plants. 'This should allow for a few leaves for each of my third years, and some to spare if anybody over-stews 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 Harri stood, invisible. Seized with an immediate desire to reveal herself, Harri pulled off the cloak with a flourish.
'Good evening, Professor.'
'Merlin's beard, Harri, 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 Harri cheerfully, and was delighted to see Slughorn scowl. 'But even if the door was locked, I could have easily unlocked it.'
'I'll be reporting that man, he's more concerned about litter than proper security if you ask me...But why are you out then, Harri? You should know the rules better than anyone.'
'Well, sir, it's Hagrid,' said Harri, 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 Albus trusts Hagrid to the hilt, so I'm sure he can't be up to anything very dreadful...'
'Well, it's this acromantula, he's had it for years...It lived in the forest...It could talk and everything -'
'I heard rumours there were acromantulas in the forest,' said Slughorn softly, looking over at the mass of black trees. 'It's true, then?'
'Yes,' said Harri. '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 absentmindedly, his large droopy eyes fixed upon the distant lights of Hagrid's cabin. 'But acromantula venom is very valuable ... If the beast 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 was any way to procure some ... I mean, it's almost impossible to get venom from an acromantula while its alive...' Slughorn seemed to be talking more to himself than Harri 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 Harri saw clearly what was to be done. 'Well,' she 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, Harri, 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 Harri sped off to Hagrid's, delighted with herself.
'You came,' croaked Hagrid, when he opened the door and saw Harri emerging from the Invisibility Cloak in front of him.
'Yeah — Ron and Hermione couldn't, though,' said Harri. 'They're really sorry.'
'Don — don matter . . . Hed've bin touched yeh're here, though, Harri. . .'
Hagrid gave a great sob. He had made himself a black armband out of what looked like a rag dipped in boot polish, and his eyes were puffy, red, and swollen. Harri patted him consolingly on the elbow, which was the highest point of Hagrid she could easily reach.
'Where are we burying him?' she asked gently. '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 only on his orders they didn' eat me! Can yeh believe that, Harri?'
The honest answer was "yes"; Harri recalled with painful ease the scene when she and Ron had come face-to-face with the acromantulas. They had been quite clear that Aragog was the only thing that stopped them from 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 Harri resumed the patting of his elbow, saying as she did so, '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,' smiled Harri. '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, that is, an' not turnin' yeh in either. I've never really had a lot ter do with Horace Slughorn before. .. . Comin' ter see old Aragog off, though, eh? Well. . . he'd've liked that, Aragog would. . . .'
Harri thought privately that what Aragog would have liked most about Slughorn was the ample amount of edible flesh he provided, but she 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 — yeh 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 Harri 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 shaking 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 now, 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 spiders head, where eight milky eyes stared blankly at the sky and two huge, curved pincers shone, motionless, in the moonlight. Harri heard the tinkle of bottles as Slughorn bent over the pincers, apparently examining the enormous hairy head, but Harri knew better.
'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 interested in creatures like Aragog, Horace.'
'Interested? My dear Hagrid, I revere them,' said Slughorn, stepping back from the body. Harri's keen eyes saw the glint of a bottle disappear beneath his cloak. Harri gave him a disapproving look. 'Now . . . shall we proceed to the burial?'
Hagrid nodded and moved forward. 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 Harri could reach no higher than Hagrid's elbow, but patted it all the same. 'Why don't I say a few words? - 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 onto the compost heap, crying harder than ever. Harri was immediately at his side.
'There, there,' said Slughorn, waving his wand so that the huge pile of earth rose up and then fell, with a muffled sort of crash, onto the dead spider, forming a smooth mound. 'Let's get inside and have a drink. Get on his other side, Harri. . . . 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 Harri's lap as usual. Slughorn uncorked one of the bottles of wine he had brought.
'I have had it all tested for poison,' he assured Harry, pouring most of the first bottle into one of Hagrid's bucket-sized mugs and handing it to Hagrid. 'Had a house-elf taste every bottle after what happened to your poor friend Rupert.'
Harri gave another disapproving look, and not because he got Ron's name wrong. How dare he use a house-elf like that! Why didn't he use a number of spells to check for poison instead?
'One for Harri...' 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, Harri, however, merely pretended to take a gulp and then set the mug back on the table before her.
'I had him from an egg, yeh know,' said Hagrid morosely. 'Tiny little thing he was when he hatched. 'Bout the size of a Pekingese.'
'Sweet,' said Slughorn.
'Used ter keep him in a cupboard up at the school until . . . well...'
Hagrid's face darkened and Harri knew why: Tom Riddle, otherwise known as Tom Dumbledore, had contrived to have Hagrid thrown out of school, blamed for opening the Chamber of Secrets. Slughorn, however, did not seem to be listening; he was looking up at the ceiling, from which a number of brass pots hung, and also a long, silky skein of bright white hair.
'That's not 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.'
Slughorn took another deep draught from his mug, his eyes moving carefully around the cabin now, looking for more treasures that he might be able to convert into a plentiful supply of oak-matured mead, crystallized 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. Neither of them noticed Harri perform a Refilling Charm, when she noticed their drink supply running out fast. She loved non-verbal spells.
After an hour or so, Hagrid and Slughorn began making extravagant toasts: to Hogwarts, to Albus, to elf-made wine, and to-
'Harrietta Dumbledore!' bellowed Hagrid, slopping some of his fourteenth bucket of wine down his chin as he drained it.
'Yes, indeed,' cried Slughorn a little thickly, 'Darri Humbledore, the Chosen Girl Who - well - something of that sort," he mumbled, and drained his mug too.
It took all of Harri's strength not to laugh. She had never seen drunk people before.
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 onto the table, a little cross-eyed, while Slughorn continued to warble the refrain. 'Me dad was no age ter go ... nor were yer mum' an' dad, Harri...' Great fat tears oozed out of the corners of Hagrid's crinkled eyes again; he grasped Harri's arm and shook it. 'Bes' wiz and witchard o' their age…I ever knew... terrible thing...terrible thing...'
'And Odo the hero, they bore him back home, To the place that he'd known as a lad,' sang Slughorn plaintively. '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 onto his arms and he fell asleep, snoring deeply.
'Sorry,' said Slughorn with a hiccup. 'Can't carry a tune to save my life.'
'Hagrid wasn't talking about your singing,' said Harry quietly, though she had to agree that it was terrible. '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, Harri?' he asked awkwardly.
'Not really — well, I was only one when they died,' said Harri, her eyes on the flame of the candle flickering in Hagrid's heavy snores. Her eyes were a little wet. She had never really talked about her parents, except to Remus in her dementor lessons. '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 . . . Uncle Voldemort murdered him and then stepped over his body toward my mum,' said Harri.
Slughorn gave a great shudder, but he did not seem able to tear his horrified gaze away from Harri'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 Harri, 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 my uncle. . . but he just laughed...'
'That's enough!' said Slughorn suddenly, raising a shaking hand. 'Really, my dear, enough . . . I'm an old man ... I don't need to hear ... I don't want to hear ...'
'I forgot,' lied Harri. 'You liked her, didn't you?'
'Liked her?' said Slughorn, his eyes brimming with tears once more. 'I don't imagine anyone who met her wouldn't have liked her. . . . Very brave . . . Very funny... It was the most horrible thing. ...'
'But you won't help her daughter,' said Harri, turning away from the candle and looking Slughorn directly in the eyes. 'She gave me her life, but you won't give me a memory.'
'Don't say that,' he whispered, unable to break away from her gaze. 'It isn't a question ... If it was to help you, of course . . . but no purpose can be served . . .'
'It can,' said Harri clearly. 'Grandfather needs information. I need information.' After a slightest hesitation, she continued, 'I am the Chosen One. I have to kil-defeat 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 Harri calmly.
'But then . . . my dear. . . 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?'
Harri, Harri, of course I do, but —'
'You're scared he'll find out you helped me?'
Slughorn said nothing; he looked terrified.
'Be brave like my mother, Professor. . .'
Slughorn raised a pudgy hand and pressed his shaking fingers to his mouth; he looked for a moment like an enormously overgrown baby.
'I am not proud. . .' he whispered through his fingers. 'I am ashamed of what — of what that memory shows. ... I think I may have done great damage that day...'
'You'd cancel out anything you did by giving me the memory,' Harri said firmly. 'It would be a very brave and noble thing to do.'
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 Harri'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 Harri.
Thank you very much, Professor.'
'You're a good girl,' 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.
Harri waited the briefest of moments, to make sure he was definitely asleep, before she patted Fang's head and torn out of Hagrid's hut, invisibility cloak in hand and ran to her grandparent's quarters. Once at the portrait, she said the password and ran to their bedroom door before knocking.
'Enter,' came a groogy reply as a light came on.
Harri entered.
'Harri? What are you doing here at this time of night? Is something wrong?' Asked Minerva, hurrying over to her.
'Everything's great, Grandmother. Better than great, in fact,' smiled Harri turning her attention to Albus, who remained sitting on the bed. 'I got it. I got the memory from Slughorn!' She said, showing him the tiny bottle that held the memory.
Minerva just looked confused, whereas Albus was suddenly wide awake and went toput a robe over his pyjamas.
'Harri, this is spectacular new!' He exclamined happily. 'Very well done indeed! I knew you could do it!'
He then said goodbye to Minerva and led Harri to his office. Minerva just stood there wondering if that had actually happened or if she had dreamed it.
The moment they arrived in the headmaster's office, Albus went over to his Pensieve.
'And now,' said Dumbledore, placing the stone basin upon the desk and emptying the contents of the bottle into it. 'Now, at last we shall see. Harri, quickly . . .'
Harri bowed obediently over the Pensieve and felt her feet leave the office floor. . . . Once again she fell through darkness and landed in Horace Slughorn's office many years before. There was the much younger 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 crystallized pineapple. And there were the half dozen teenage boys sitting around Slughorn with Tom Dumbledore in the midst of them, Marvolo's gold-and-black ring gleaming on his finger.
Albus landed beside Harri just as Tom 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 Tom, 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.'
Tom smiled; the other boys laughed and cast him admiring looks. Harri thought that he had probably overheard her grandparents talking about it.
'What with your uncanny ability to know things you shouldn't, and your careful flattery of the people who matter — thank you for the pineapple, by the way, you're quite right, it is my favourite —' Several of the boys tittered again. '— I confidently expect you to rise to Minister of Magic within twenty years. Fifteen, if you keep sending me pineapple, I have excellent contacts at the Ministry.'
Tom merely smiled as the others laughed again. It was then that Harri noticed that Tom 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,' Tom 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. Harri 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 around.
'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 in morrow 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 around; Tom was still standing there.
'Look sharp, Tom, you don't want to be caught out of bed out of hours, and you a prefect.. .'
'Uncle Horace,' Tom began, startling Harri, before she remembered the Slughorn was a good friend of Albus'. 'I wanted to ask you something.'
'Ask away, then, m'boy, ask away. . . .'
'I wondered what you know about. . . about Horcruxes?'
Slughorn stared at him, his thick ringers absentmindedly clawing the stem of his wine glass.
'Project for Defence Against the Dark Arts, is it?'
Harri could tell that Slughorn knew perfectly well that this was not schoolwork.
'Not exactly, Uncle,' admitted Tom. '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? 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 –'
It was very well done, thought Harri, the hesitancy, the casual tone, the careful flattery, none of it overdone. Harri had had too much experience of trying to wheedle information out of reluctant people not to recognize a master at work. Maybe that's where she got her ability from. She could also tell that her uncle wanted the information very, very much; perhaps had been working toward this moment for weeks.
'Well,' said Slughorn, not looking at Tom, but fiddling with the ribbon on top of his box of crystallized pineapple, 'well, it can't hurt to give you an overview, of course. Just so that you understand t he term. A Horcrux is the word used for an object in which a per-son has concealed part of their soul.'
'I don't quite understand how that works, though,' said Tom
.
His voice was carefully controlled, but Harri could sense his excitement.
'Well, you split your soul, you see,' said Slughorn, 'and hide part of it in an object outside the body. Then, even if one's body is attacked or destroyed, one cannot die, for part of the soul remains earthbound and undamaged. But of course, existence in such a form ...'
Slughorn's face crumpled and Harri found herself remembering words her uncle Voldemort had said 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." Did this mean that Voldemort had made one of these Horcruxes.
'... few would want it, Tom, very few. Death would be preferable.'
But Tom'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, of course not, Uncle,' said Tom quickly. 'I'm sorry ... I didn't mean to offend . . .'
'Not at all, not at all, not offended,' said Slughorn gruffly, 'It is natural to feel some curiosity about these things. . . . Wizards of a certain calibre have always been drawn to that aspect of magic. . . .'
'Yes,' said Tom. 'What I don't understand, though — just out of curiosity — I mean, would one Horcrux be much use? Can you only split your soul once? Wouldn't it be better, make you stronger, to have your soul in more pieces, I mean, for instance, isn't seven the most powerfully magical number, wouldn't seven — ?'
'Merlin's beard, Tom!' yelped Slughorn. 'Seven! Isn't it bad enough to think of killing one person? And in any case . . . bad enough to divide the soul . . . but to rip it into seven pieces . . .'
Slughorn looked deeply troubled now: He was gazing at Tom as though he had never seen him plainly before. Clearly he hadn't expected to have a conversation like this with his friend's talented and fine son.
'Of course,' he muttered, 'this is all hypothetical, what we're discussing, isn't it? All academic . . .'
'Of course, Uncle,' chuckled Tom, frowning at Slughorn as though he was mad to think otherwise.
'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. . . . your father's particularly fierce about it...'
'I know, that's why I came to you. But don't worry, Uncle...I won't say a word,' smiled Tom, and he left, but not before Harri had glimpsed his face, which was full happiness, the sort of happiness that did not enhance his handsome features, but made them, somehow, less human. . . .
'Thank you, Harri,' Albus said quietly. 'Let us go. . . .'
When Harri landed back on the office floor Albus was already sitting down behind his desk. Harri sat too and waited for her grandfather to speak.
'I have been hoping for this piece of evidence for a very long time,' said Albus at last, sounding slightly upset. '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...'
Harri suddenly noticed that every single one of the old head-masters and headmistresses in the portraits around the walls was awake and listening in on their conversation. A corpulent, red nosed wizard had actually taken out an ear trumpet.
'Well, Harri,' said Albus, '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 was doing all he could to find out how to make himself immortal.'
'He succeeded, didn't he?' Harri asked. '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 Albus. '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 Horcrux. 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.'
Albus paused for a moment, marshalling his thought, and then said, 'Four years ago, I received what I considered certain proof that Voldemort had split his soul.'
'You did? How?'
'You handed it to me, Harri,' said Albus. "The diary, Tom's diary, the one giving instructions on how to reopen the Chamber of Secrets.'
'I don't understand,' said Harri.
'Well, although I did not see the Tom who came out of the diary, what you described to me was a phenomenon I had never witnessed. A mere memory starting to act and think for itself? A mere memory, sapping the life out of the girl into whose hands it had fallen? No, something much more sinister had lived inside that book. ... a fragment of soul, I was almost sure of it. The diary had been a Horcrux. But this raised as many questions as it answered. What intrigued and alarmed me most was that that diary had been intended as a weapon as much as a safeguard.'
'I still don't understand.'
'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 some-body else, so that Slytherin's monster would be unleashed again.'
'Well, he didn't want his hard work to be wasted,' said Harri disdainfully. 'He wanted people to know he was Slytherin's heir, because he couldn't take credit at the time.'
'Quite correct,' said Albus, nodding. 'But don't you see, Harri, 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 had been planning to make — more Horcruxes, so that the loss of his first would not be so detrimental. I did not wish to believe it - what parent would? -, 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, Harri, which I don't believe any other wizard has ever had. Yet it fitted: Lord Voldemort has seemed to grow less human with the passing years, and the transformation he had undergone seemed to me to be only explainable if his soul was mutilated beyond the realms of what we might call "usual evil"... But now, Harri, 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, Harri: "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 a horror-struck and disgusted Harri, while several of the portraits on the walls made similar noises of shock mid 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, Harri, 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 Harri, 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 Harri eagerly.
'Yes indeed,' said Albus, and he raised his blackened, burned-looking hand. 'The ring. 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 Severus' timely action when I returned to Hogwarts, desperately injured, I might not have lived to tell the tale.'
Harri was shocked by that piece of information. Severus knew what had happened, yet he never said anything.
'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, for many years I have made it my business 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 Gaunt's house. It seems that once Voldemort had succeeded in sealing a piece of his soul in side it, he did not want to wear it anymore. He hid it, protected by many powerful enchantments, in the shack where his ancestors had once lived 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.'
'Does that mean they could be like Portkeys? Objects that can be easily overlooked?'
'Can you honestly imagine Lord Voldemort using tin cans or old potion bottles to guard his own precious soul? You are forgetting what I have showed 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 Horcrux with some care, favouring objects worthy of the honour.'
'The diary wasn't that special.' Harri said pointedly.
'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 a still not convinced Harri. 'Do you think you know what they are?'
'I can only guess,' said Albus. '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 travelled back through Voldemort's past to see if I can find evidence that such artefacts have disappeared around him.'
'The locket!' Harri said loudly, suddenly understanding. 'Hufflepuff's cup!'
'Yes,' said Albus, 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.' Albus 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 to teach? To try and find something from one of the other founders?'
'My thoughts precisely,' said Albus. 'Though I do have to admit that part of him probably did want to teach, for he use to enjoy tutoring his old friends and he use to say that he wanted to be a teacher like his mother and I when he was younger. Even during that period of time when the twins were growing up, he enjoyed teaching them.' Albus paused for a moment, thinking sadly back to the boy his eldest son use to be, before getting straight back to business. 'Unfortunately, that does not advance us much further, for he was turned away, or so I believe, without the chance to search the school. I am forced to conclude that he never fulfilled his ambition of collecting four founders' objects. He definitely had two — he may have found three — that is the best we can do for now.'
'Even if he got something of Ravenclaw's, that leaves a sixth Horcrux.'
'I think I know what the sixth Horcrux is,' confessed Albus. '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 a startled Harri. 'You can use animals as Horcruxes?'
'Of course. You could even use a human, but it is inadvisable to do so,' said Albus, '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 un-usual amount of control over her, even for a Parselmouth.'
'So,' said Harri, '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. So . . . are you still looking for them? Is that where you've been going when you've been leaving the school?'
'Correct,' said Albus. '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,' Harri asked quickly, 'can I come with you and help get rid of it?'
Albus looked at Harri very intently for a moment before saying, 'Yes, I think so. I think you have earned that right.'
Harri was ecstatic. It was the Valkyrie part of her that was earning for some adventure.
'Does Voldemort know when a Horcrux is destroyed? Can he feel it?' Harri asked as the thought suddenly occurred to her.
'A very interesting question, Harri. I believe not. I believe that Voldemort is now so immersed in evil, and these crucial parts of himself have been detached for so long, he does not feel as we do. Perhaps, at the point of death, he might be aware of his loss...but he was not aware, for instance, that the diary had been destroyed until he forced the truth out of Lucius Malfoy. When Voldemort discovered that the diary had been mutilated and robbed of all its powers, I am told that his anger was terrible to behold.'
'But I thought he meant for Mr 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' 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 masters 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 Weasleys daughter, he hoped to discredit Arthur and get rid of a highly incriminating magical 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 not secretly glad to be safe in Azkaban at the moment.'
'So if all of his Horcruxes are destroyed, Voldemort could be killed?'
'Yes, I think so,' said Albus sadly. '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 be-yond repair, his brain and his magical powers remain intact. It will take uncommon skill and power to kill a wizard like Voldemort even without his Horcruxes.'
Harri nodded, but she had no intention of killing her uncle. She knew there was good still left in him, and she believed that his sudden change to being evil had something to do with Grindelwald's attack on Diagon Alley, before his sixth year. She knew that if she found out exactly what happened that day, she would be able to save him, as only she could. She was going to make sure her vision came true in order to mend her broken family...
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Written: 21 November 2011.
