The Half-Blood Prince Read online

  Dumbledore and Harry followed him on to a narrow dirt track bordered by higher and wilder hedgerows than those they had left behind. The path was crooked, rocky and potholed, sloping downhill like the last one, and it seemed to be heading for a patch of dark trees a little below them. Sure enough, the track soon opened up at the copse, and Dumbledore and Harry came to a halt behind Ogden, who had stopped and drawn his wand.

  Despite the cloudless sky, the old trees ahead cast deep, dark, cool shadows and it was a few seconds before Harry’s eyes discerned the building half-hidden amongst the tangle of trunks. It seemed to him a very strange location to choose for a house, or else an odd decision to leave the trees growing nearby, blocking all light and the view of the valley below. He wondered whether it was inhabited; its walls were mossy and so many tiles had fallen off the roof that the rafters were visible in places. Nettles grew all around it, their tips reaching the windows, which were tiny and thick with grime. Just as he had concluded that nobody could possibly live there, however, one of the windows was thrown open with a clatter and a thin trickle of steam or smoke issued from it, as though somebody was cooking.

  Ogden moved forwards quietly and, it seemed to Harry, rather cautiously. As the dark shadows of the trees slid over him, he stopped again, staring at the front door, to which somebody had nailed a dead snake.

  Then there was a rustle and a crack and a man in rags dropped from the nearest tree, landing on his feet right in front of Ogden, who leapt backwards so fast that he stood on the tails of his frock-coat and stumbled.

  ‘You’re not welcome.’

  The man standing before them had thick hair so matted with dirt it could have been any colour. Several of his teeth were missing. His eyes were small and dark and stared in opposite directions. He might have looked comical, but he did not; the effect was frightening, and Harry could not blame Ogden for backing away several more paces before he spoke.

  ‘Er – good morning. I’m from the Ministry of Magic –’

  ‘You’re not welcome.’

  ‘Er – I’m sorry – I don’t understand you,’ said Ogden nervously.

  Harry thought Ogden was being extremely dim; the stranger was making himself very clear in Harry’s opinion, particularly as he was brandishing a wand in one hand and a short and rather bloody knife in the other.

  ‘You understand him, I’m sure, Harry?’ said Dumbledore quietly.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Harry, slightly nonplussed. ‘Why can’t Ogden –?’

  But as his eyes found the dead snake on the door again, he suddenly understood.

  ‘He’s speaking Parseltongue?’

  ‘Very good,’ said Dumbledore, nodding and smiling.

  The man in rags was now advancing on Ogden, knife in one hand, wand in the other.

  ‘Now, look –’ Ogden began, but too late: there was a bang, and Ogden was on the ground, clutching his nose, while a nasty yellowish goo squirted from between his fingers.

  ‘Morfin!’ said a loud voice.

  An elderly man had come hurrying out of the cottage, banging the door behind him so that the dead snake swung pathetically. This man was shorter than the first, and oddly proportioned; his shoulders were very broad and his arms overlong, which, with his bright brown eyes, short scrubby hair and wrinkled face, gave him the look of a powerful, aged monkey. He came to a halt beside the man with the knife, who was now cackling with laughter at the sight of Ogden on the ground.

  ‘Ministry, is it?’ said the older man, looking down at Ogden.

  ‘Correct!’ said Ogden angrily, dabbing his face. ‘And you, I take it, are Mr Gaunt?’

  ‘’S right,’ said Gaunt. ‘Got you in the face, did he?’

  ‘Yes, he did!’ snapped Ogden.

  ‘Should’ve made your presence known, shouldn’t you?’ said Gaunt aggressively. ‘This is private property. Can’t just walk in here and not expect my son to defend himself.’

  ‘Defend himself against what, man?’ said Ogden, clambering back to his feet.

  ‘Busybodies. Intruders. Muggles and filth.’

  Ogden pointed his wand at his own nose, which was still issuing large amounts of what looked like yellow pus, and the flow stopped at once. Mr Gaunt spoke out of the corner of his mouth to Morfin.

  ‘Get in the house. Don’t argue.’

  This time, ready for it, Harry recognised Parseltongue; even while he could understand what was being said, he distinguished the weird hissing noise that was all Ogden could hear. Morfin seemed to be on the point of disagreeing, but when his father cast him a threatening look he changed his mind, lumbering away to the cottage with an odd rolling gait and slamming the front door behind him, so that the snake swung sadly again.

  ‘It’s your son I’m here to see, Mr Gaunt,’ said Ogden, as he mopped the last of the pus from the front of his coat. ‘That was Morfin, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Ar, that was Morfin,’ said the old man indifferently. ‘Are you pure-blood?’ he asked, suddenly aggressive.

  ‘That’s neither here nor there,’ said Ogden coldly, and Harry felt his respect for Ogden rise.

  Apparently Gaunt felt rather differently. He squinted into Ogden’s face and muttered, in what was clearly supposed to be an offensive tone, ‘Now I come to think about it, I’ve seen noses like yours down in the village.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it, if your son’s been let loose on them,’ said Ogden. ‘Perhaps we could continue this discussion inside?’

  ‘Inside?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Gaunt. I’ve already told you. I’m here about Morfin. We sent an owl –’

  ‘I’ve no use for owls,’ said Gaunt. ‘I don’t open letters.’

  ‘Then you can hardly complain that you get no warning of visitors,’ said Ogden tartly. ‘I am here following a serious breach of wizarding law which occurred here in the early hours of this morning –’

  ‘All right, all right, all right!’ bellowed Gaunt. ‘Come in the bleeding house, then, and much good it’ll do you!’

  The house seemed to contain three tiny rooms. Two doors led off the main room, which served as kitchen and living room combined. Morfin was sitting in a filthy armchair beside the smoking fire, twisting a live adder between his thick fingers and crooning softly at it in Parseltongue:

  ‘Hissy hissy, little snakey,

  Slither on the floor

  You be good to Morfin

  Or he’ll nail you to the door.’

  There was a scuffling noise in the corner beside the open window and Harry realised that there was somebody else in the room, a girl whose ragged grey dress was the exact colour of the dirty stone wall behind her. She was standing beside a steaming pot on a grimy black stove, and was fiddling around with the shelf of squalid-looking pots and pans above it. Her hair was lank and dull and she had a plain, pale, rather heavy face. Her eyes, like her brother’s, stared in opposite directions. She looked a little cleaner than the two men, but Harry thought he had never seen a more defeated-looking person.

  ‘M’daughter, Merope,’ said Gaunt grudgingly, as Ogden looked enquiringly towards her.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Ogden.

  She did not answer, but with a frightened glance at her father turned her back on the room and continued shifting the pots on the shelf behind her.

  ‘Well, Mr Gaunt,’ said Ogden, ‘to get straight to the point, we have reason to believe that your son Morfin performed magic in front of a Muggle late last night.’

  There was a deafening clang. Merope had dropped one of the pots.

  ‘Pick it up!’ Gaunt bellowed at her. ‘That’s it, grub on the floor like some filthy Muggle, what’s your wand for, you useless sack of muck?’

  ‘Mr Gaunt, please!’ said Ogden in a shocked voice, as Merope, who had already picked up the pot, flushed blotchily scarlet, lost her grip on the pot again, drew her wand shakily from her pocket, pointed it at the pot and muttered a hasty, inaudible spell that caused the pot to shoot across the floor away from her, hit the opp
osite wall and crack in two.

  Morfin let out a mad cackle of laughter. Gaunt screamed, ‘Mend it, you pointless lump, mend it!’

  Merope stumbled across the room, but before she had time to raise her wand, Ogden had lifted his own and said firmly, ‘Reparo.’ The pot mended itself instantly.

  Gaunt looked for a moment as though he was going to shout at Ogden, but seemed to think better of it: instead he jeered at his daughter, ‘Lucky the nice man from the Ministry’s here, isn’t it? Perhaps he’ll take you off my hands, perhaps he doesn’t mind dirty Squibs …’

  Without looking at anybody or thanking Ogden, Merope picked up the pot and returned it, hands trembling, to its shelf. She then stood quite still, her back against the wall between the filthy window and the stove, as though she wished for nothing more than to sink into the stone and vanish.

  ‘Mr Gaunt,’ Ogden began again, ‘as I’ve said: the reason for my visit –’

  ‘I heard you the first time!’ snapped Gaunt. ‘And so what? Morfin gave a Muggle a bit of what was coming to him – what about it, then?’

  ‘Morfin has broken wizarding law,’ said Ogden sternly.

  ‘Morfin has broken wizarding law.’ Gaunt imitated Ogden’s voice, making it pompous and singsong. Morfin cackled again. ‘He taught a filthy Muggle a lesson, that’s illegal now, is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ogden. ‘I’m afraid it is.’

  He pulled from an inside pocket a small scroll of parchment and unrolled it.

  ‘What’s that, then, his sentence?’ said Gaunt, his voice rising angrily.

  ‘It is a summons to the Ministry for a hearing –’

  ‘Summons! Summons? Who do you think you are, summoning my son anywhere?’

  ‘I’m Head of the Magical Law Enforcement Squad,’ said Ogden.

  ‘And you think we’re scum, do you?’ screamed Gaunt, advancing on Ogden now, with a dirty yellow-nailed finger pointing at his chest. ‘Scum who’ll come running when the Ministry tells ’em to? Do you know who you’re talking to, you filthy little Mudblood, do you?’

  ‘I was under the impression that I was speaking to Mr Gaunt,’ said Ogden, looking wary, but standing his ground.

  ‘That’s right!’ roared Gaunt. For a moment, Harry thought Gaunt was making an obscene hand gesture, but then realised that he was showing Ogden the ugly, black-stoned ring he was wearing on his middle finger, waving it before Ogden’s eyes. ‘See this? See this? Know what it is? Know where it came from? Centuries it’s been in our family, that’s how far back we go, and pure-blood all the way! Know how much I’ve been offered for this, with the Peverell coat of arms engraved on the stone?’

  ‘I’ve really no idea,’ said Ogden, blinking as the ring sailed within an inch of his nose, ‘and it’s quite beside the point, Mr Gaunt. Your son has committed –’

  With a howl of rage, Gaunt ran towards his daughter. For a split second, Harry thought he was going to throttle her as his hand flew to her throat; next moment, he was dragging her towards Ogden by a gold chain around her neck.

  ‘See this?’ he bellowed at Ogden, shaking a heavy gold locket at him, while Merope spluttered and gasped for breath.

  ‘I see it, I see it!’ said Ogden hastily.

  ‘Slytherin’s!’ yelled Gaunt. ‘Salazar Slytherin’s! We’re his last living descendants, what do you say to that, eh?’

  ‘Mr Gaunt, your daughter!’ said Ogden in alarm, but Gaunt had already released Merope; she staggered away from him, back to her corner, massaging her neck and gulping for air.

  ‘So!’ said Gaunt triumphantly, as though he had just proved a complicated point beyond all possible dispute. ‘Don’t you go talking to us as if we’re dirt on your shoes! Generations of pure-bloods, wizards all – more than you can say, I don’t doubt!’

  And he spat on the floor at Ogden’s feet. Morfin cackled again. Merope, huddled beside the window, her head bowed and her face hidden by her lank hair, said nothing.

  ‘Mr Gaunt,’ said Ogden doggedly, ‘I am afraid that neither your ancestors nor mine have anything to do with the matter in hand. I am here because of Morfin, Morfin and the Muggle he accosted late last night. Our information,’ he glanced down at his scroll of parchment, ‘is that Morfin performed a jinx or hex on the said Muggle, causing him to erupt in highly painful hives.’

  Morfin giggled.

  ‘Be quiet, boy,’ snarled Gaunt in Parseltongue, and Morfin fell silent again.

  ‘And so what if he did, then?’ Gaunt said defiantly to Ogden. ‘I expect you’ve wiped the Muggle’s filthy face clean for him, and his memory to boot –’

  ‘That’s hardly the point, is it, Mr Gaunt?’ said Ogden. ‘This was an unprovoked attack on a defenceless –’

  ‘Ar, I had you marked out as a Muggle-lover the moment I saw you,’ sneered Gaunt and he spat on the floor again.

  ‘This discussion is getting us nowhere,’ said Ogden firmly. ‘It is clear from your son’s attitude that he feels no remorse for his actions.’ He glanced down at his scroll of parchment again. ‘Morfin will attend a hearing on the fourteenth of September to answer the charges of using magic in front of a Muggle and causing harm and distress to that same Mugg—’

  Ogden broke off. The jingling, clopping sounds of horses and loud, laughing voices were drifting in through the open window. Apparently the winding lane to the village passed very close to the copse where the house stood. Gaunt froze, listening, his eyes wide. Morfin hissed and turned his face towards the sounds, his expression hungry. Merope raised her head. Her face, Harry saw, was starkly white.

  ‘My God, what an eyesore!’ rang out a girl’s voice, as clearly audible through the open window as if she had stood in the room beside them. ‘Couldn’t your father have that hovel cleared away, Tom?’

  ‘It’s not ours,’ said a young man’s voice. ‘Everything on the other side of the valley belongs to us, but that cottage belongs to an old tramp called Gaunt and his children. The son’s quite mad, you should hear some of the stories they tell in the village –’

  The girl laughed. The jingling, clopping noises were growing louder and louder. Morfin made to get out of his armchair.

  ‘Keep your seat,’ said his father warningly, in Parseltongue.

  ‘Tom,’ said the girl’s voice again, now so close they were clearly right beside the house, ‘I might be wrong – but has somebody nailed a snake to that door?’

  ‘Good Lord, you’re right!’ said the man’s voice. ‘That’ll be the son, I told you he’s not right in the head. Don’t look at it, Cecilia, darling.’

  The jingling and clopping sounds were now growing fainter again.

  ‘“Darling”,’ whispered Morfin in Parseltongue, looking at his sister. ‘“Darling”, he called her. So he wouldn’t have you anyway.’

  Merope was so white Harry felt sure she was going to faint.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Gaunt sharply, also in Parseltongue, looking from his son to his daughter. ‘What did you say, Morfin?’

  ‘She likes looking at that Muggle,’ said Morfin, a vicious expression on his face as he stared at his sister, who now looked terrified. ‘Always in the garden when he passes, peering through the hedge at him, isn’t she? And last night –’

  Merope shook her head jerkily, imploringly, but Morfin went on ruthlessly, ‘Hanging out of the window waiting for him to ride home, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Hanging out of the window to look at a Muggle?’ said Gaunt quietly.

  All three of the Gaunts seemed to have forgotten Ogden, who was looking both bewildered and irritated at this renewed outbreak of incomprehensible hissing and rasping.

  ‘Is it true?’ said Gaunt in a deadly voice, advancing a step or two towards the terrified girl. ‘My daughter – pure-blooded descendant of Salazar Slytherin – hankering after a filthy, dirt-veined Muggle?’

  Merope shook her head frantically, pressing herself into the wall, apparently unable to speak.

  ‘But I got him, Father!’ cackled Mor
fin. ‘I got him as he went by, and he didn’t look so pretty with hives all over him, did he, Merope?’

  ‘You disgusting little Squib, you filthy little blood traitor!’ roared Gaunt, losing control, and his hands closed around his daughter’s throat.

  Both Harry and Ogden yelled ‘No!’ at the same time; Ogden raised his wand and cried, ‘Relashio!’ Gaunt was thrown backwards, away from his daughter; he tripped over a chair and fell flat on his back. With a roar of rage, Morfin leapt out of his chair and ran at Ogden, brandishing his bloody knife and firing hexes indiscriminately from his wand.

  Ogden ran for his life. Dumbledore indicated that they ought to follow and Harry obeyed, Merope’s screams echoing in his ears.

  Ogden hurtled up the path and erupted on to the main lane, his arms over his head, where he collided with the glossy chestnut horse ridden by a very handsome, dark-haired young man. Both he and the pretty girl riding beside him on a grey horse roared with laughter at the sight of Ogden, who bounced off the horse’s flank and set off again, his frock-coat flying, covered from head to foot in dust, running pell-mell up the lane.

  ‘I think that will do, Harry,’ said Dumbledore. He took Harry by the elbow and tugged. Next moment, they were both soaring weightlessly through darkness, until they landed squarely on their feet, back in Dumbledore’s now twilit office.

  ‘What happened to the girl in the cottage?’ said Harry at once, as Dumbledore lit extra lamps with a flick of his wand. ‘Merope, or whatever her name was?’

  ‘Oh, she survived,’ said Dumbledore, reseating himself behind his desk and indicating that Harry should sit down too. ‘Ogden Apparated back to the Ministry and returned with reinforcements within fifteen minutes. Morfin and his father attempted to fight, but both were overpowered, removed from the cottage and subsequently convicted by the Wizengamot. Morfin, who already had a record of Muggle attacks, was sentenced to three years in Azkaban. Marvolo, who had injured several Ministry employees in addition to Ogden, received six months.’