Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince hp-6 Read online

Page 21

Harry woke early on the morning of the trip, which was proving stormy, and whiled away the time until breakfast by reading his copy of Advanced Potion-Making. He did not usually lie in bed reading his textbooks; that sort of behavior, as Ron rightly said, was indecent in anybody except Hermione, who was simply weird that way. Harry felt, however, that the Half-Blood Prince’s copy of Advanced Potion-Making hardly qualified as a textbook. The more Harry pored over the book, the more he realized how much was in there, not only the handy hints and shortcuts on potions that was earning him such a glowing reputation with Slughorn, but also the imaginative little jinxes and hexes scribbled in the margins, which Harry was sure, judging by the crossings-out and revisions, that the Prince had invented himself.

  Harry had already attempted a few of the Prince’s self-invented spells. There had been a hex that caused toenails to grow alarmingly fast (he had tried this on Crabbe in the corridor, with very entertaining results); a jinx that glued the tongue to the roof of the mouth (which he had twice used, to general applause, on an unsuspecting Argus Filch); and, perhaps most useful of all, Muffliato, a spell that filled the ears of anyone nearby with an unidentifiable buzzing, so that lengthy conversations could be held in class without being overheard. The only person who did not find these charms amusing was Hermione, who maintained a rigidly disapproving expression throughout and refused to talk at all if Harry had used the Muffliato spell on anyone in the vicinity.

  Sitting up in bed, Harry turned the book sideways so as to examine more closely the scribbled instructions for a spell that seemed to have caused the Prince some trouble. There were many crossings-out and alterations, but finally, crammed into a corner of the page, the scribble:

  Levicorpus (n-vbl)

  While the wind and sleet pounded relentlessly on the windows, and Neville snored loudly, Harry stared at the letters in brackets. N-vbl… that had to mean “non-verbal.” Harry rather doubted he would be able to bring off this particular spell; he was still having difficulty with non-verbal spells, something Snape had been quick to comment on in every D.A.D.A. class. On the other hand, the Prince had proved a much more effective teacher than Snape so far.

  Pointing his wand at nothing in particular, he gave it an upward flick and said Levicorpus! inside his head.

  “Aaaaaaaargh!”

  There was a flash of light and the room was full of voices: everyone had woken up as Ron had let out a yell. Harry sent Advanced Potion-Making flying in panic; Ron was dangling upside down in midair as though an invisible hook had hoisted him up by the ankle.

  “Sorry!” yelled Harry, as Dean and Seamus roared with laughter, and Neville picked himself up from the floor, having fallen out of bed. “Hang on—I’ll let you down—”

  He groped for the potion book and riffled through it in a panic, trying to find the right page; at last he located it and deciphered the cramped word underneath the spell: praying that this was the counter-jinx, Harry thought Liberacorpus! with all his might. There was another flash of light, and Ron fell in a heap onto his mattress.

  “Sorry,” repeated Harry weakly, while Dean and Seamus continued to roar with laughter.

  “Tomorrow,” said Ron in a muffled voice, “I’d rather you set the alarm clock.”

  By the time they had got dressed, padding themselves out with several of Mrs. Weasley’s hand-knitted sweaters and carrying cloaks, scarves, and gloves, Ron’s shock had subsided and he had decided that Harry’s new spell was highly amusing; so amusing, in fact, that he lost no time in regaling Hermione with the story as they sat down for breakfast.

  “…and then there was another flash, of light and I landed on the bed again!” Ron grinned, helping himself to sausages.

  Hermione had not cracked a smile during this anecdote, and now turned an expression of wintry disapproval upon Harry.

  “Was this spell, by any chance, another one from that potion book of yours?” she asked.

  Harry frowned at her.

  “Always jump to the worst conclusion, don’t you?”

  “Was it?”

  “Well… yeah, it was, but so what?”

  “So you just decided to try out an unknown, handwritten incantation and see what would happen?”

  “Why does it matter if it’s handwritten?” said Harry, preferring not to answer the rest of the question.

  “Because it’s probably not Ministry of Magic approved,” said Hermione. “And also,” she added, as Harry and Ron rolled their eyes, “because I’m starting to think this Prince character was a bit dodgy.”

  Both Harry and Ron shouted her down at once.

  “It was a laugh!” said Ron, upending a ketchup bottle over his sausages. “Just a laugh, Hermione, that’s all!”

  “Dangling people upside down by the ankle?” said Hermione. “Who puts their time and energy into making up spells like that?”

  “Fred and George,” said Ron, shrugging, “it’s their kind of thing. And, er—”

  “My dad,” said Harry. He had only just remembered.

  “What?” said Ron and Hermione together.

  “My dad used this spell,” said Harry. “I—Lupin told me.”

  This last part was not true; in fact, Harry had seen his father use the spell on Snape, but he had never told Ron and Hermione about that particular excursion into the Pensieve. Now, however, a wonderful possibility occurred to him. Could the Half-Blood Prince possibly be—?

  “Maybe your dad did use it, Harry,” said Hermione, “but he’s not the only one. We’ve seen a whole bunch of people use it, in case you’ve forgotten. Dangling people in the air. Making them float along, asleep, helpless.”

  Harry stared at her. With a sinking feeling, he too remembered the behavior of the Death Eaters at the Quidditch World Cup. Ron came to his aid.

  “That was different,” he said robustly. “They were abusing it. Harry and his dad were just having a laugh. You don’t like the Prince, Hermione,” he added, pointing a sausage at her sternly, “because he’s better than you at Potions—”

  “It’s got nothing to do with that!” said Hermione, her cheeks reddening. “I just think it’s very irresponsible to start performing spells when you don’t even know what they’re for, and stop talking about ‘the Prince’ as if it’s his title, I bet it’s just a stupid nickname, and it doesn’t seem as though he was a very nice person to me!”

  “I don’t see where you get that from,” said Harry heatedly. “If he’d been a budding Death Eater he wouldn’t have been boasting about being ‘half-blood,’ would he?”

  Even as he said it, Harry remembered that his father had been pure-blood, but he pushed the thought out of his mind; he would worry about that later.

  “The Death Eaters can’t all be pure-blood, there aren’t enough pure-blood wizards left,” said Hermione stubbornly. “I expect most of them are half-bloods pretending to be pure. It’s only Muggle-borns they hate, they’d be quite happy to let you and Ron join up.”

  “There is no way they’d let me be a Death Eater!” said Ron indignantly, a bit of sausage flying off the fork he was now brandishing at Hermione and hitting Ernie Macmillan on the head. “My whole family are blood traitors! That’s as bad as Muggle-borns to Death Eaters!”

  “And they’d love to have me,” said Harry sarcastically. “We’d be best pals if they didn’t keep trying to do me in.”

  This made Ron laugh; even Hermione gave a grudging smile, and a distraction arrived in the shape of Ginny.

  “Hey, Harry, I’m supposed to give you this.”

  It was a scroll of parchment with Harry’s name written upon it in familiar thin, slanting writing.

  “Thanks, Ginny… It’s Dumbledore’s next lesson!” Harry told Ron and Hermione, pulling open the parchment and quickly reading its contents. “Monday evening!” He felt suddenly light and happy. “Want to join us in Hogsmeade, Ginny?” he asked.

  “I’m going with Dean—might see you there,” she replied, waving at them as she left.

  Filch w
as standing at the oak front doors as usual, checking off the names of people who had permission to go into Hogsmeade. The process took even longer than normal as Filch was triple-checking everybody with his Secrecy Sensor.

  “What does it matter if we’re smuggling Dark stuff OUT?” demanded Ron, eyeing the long thin Secrecy Sensor with apprehension. “Surely you ought to be checking what we bring back IN?”

  His cheek earned him a few extra jabs with the Sensor, and he was still wincing as they stepped out into the wind and sleet.

  The walk into Hogsmeade was not enjoyable. Harry wrapped his scarf over his lower face; the exposed part soon felt both raw and numb. The road to the village was full of students bent double against the bitter wind. More than once Harry wondered whether they might not have had a better time in the warm common room, and when they finally reached Hogsmeade and saw that Zonko’s Joke Shop had been boarded up, Harry took it as confirmation that this trip was not destined to be fun. Ron pointed, with a thickly gloved hand, toward Honeydukes, which was mercifully open, and Harry and Hermione staggered in his wake into the crowded shop.

  “Thank God,” shivered Ron as they were enveloped by warm, toffee-scented air. “Let’s stay here all afternoon.”

  “Harry, m’boy!” said a booming voice from behind them.

  “Oh no,” muttered Harry. The three of them turned to see Professor Slughorn, who was wearing an enormous furry hat and an overcoat with matching fur collar, clutching a large bag of crystallized pineapple, and occupying at least a quarter of the shop.

  “Harry, that’s three of my little suppers you’ve missed now!” said Slughorn, poking him genially in the chest. “It won’t do, m’boy, I’m determined to have you! Miss Granger loves them, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Hermione helplessly, “they’re really—”

  “So why don’t you come along, Harry?” demanded Slughorn.

  “Well, I’ve had Quidditch practice, Professor,” said Harry, who had indeed been scheduling practices every time Slughorn had sent him a little, violet ribbon-adorned invitation. This strategy meant that Ron was not left out, and they usually had a laugh with Ginny, imagining Hermione shut up with McLaggen and Zabini.

  “Well, I certainly expect you to win your first match after all the hard work!” said Slughorn. “But a little recreation never hurt any body. Now, how about Monday night, you can’t possibly want to practice in this weather…”

  “I can’t, Professor, I’ve got—er—an appointment with Professor Dumbledore that evening.”

  “Unlucky again!” cried Slughorn dramatically. “Ah, well… you can’t evade me forever, Harry!”

  And with a regal wave, he waddled out of the shop, taking as little notice of Ron as though he had been a display of Cockroach Clusters.

  “I can’t believe you’ve wriggled out of another one,” said Hermione, shaking her head. “They’re not that bad, you know… They’re even quite fun sometimes…” But then she caught sight of Ron’s expression. “Oh, look—they’ve got deluxe sugar quills—those would last hours!”

  Glad that Hermione had changed the subject, Harry showed much more interest in the new extra-large sugar quills than he would normally have done, but Ron continued to look moody and merely shrugged when Hermione asked him where he wanted to go next.

  “Let’s go to the Three Broomsticks,” said Harry. “It’ll be warm.”

  They bundled their scarves back over their faces and left the sweetshop. The bitter wind was like knives on their faces after the sugary warmth of Honeydukes. The street was not very busy; nobody was lingering to chat, just hurrying toward their destinations. The exceptions were two men a little ahead of them, standing just outside the Three Broomsticks. One was very tall and thin; squinting through his rain-washed glasses Harry recognized the barman who worked in the other Hogsmeade pub, the Hog’s Head. As Harry, Ron, and Hermione drew closer, the barman drew his cloak more tightly around his neck and walked away, leaving the shorter man to fumble with something in his arms. They were barely feet from him when Harry realized who the man was.

  “Mundungus!”

  The squat, bandy-legged man with long, straggly, ginger hair jumped and dropped an ancient suitcase, which burst open, releasing what looked like the entire contents of a junk shop window.

  “Oh, ’ello, ’Arry,” said Mundungus Fletcher, with a most unconvincing stab at airiness. “Well, don’t let me keep ya.”

  And he began scrabbling on the ground to retrieve the contents of his suitcase with every appearance of a man eager to be gone.

  “Are you selling this stuff?” asked Harry, watching Mundungus grab an assortment of grubby-looking objects from the ground.

  “Oh, well, gotta scrape a living,” said Mundungus. “Gimme that!”

  Ron had stooped down and picked up something silver.

  “Hang on,” Ron said slowly. “This looks familiar—”

  “Thank you!” said Mundungus, snatching the goblet out of Ron’s hand and stuffing it back into the case. “Well, I’ll see you all—OUCH!”

  Harry had pinned Mundungus against the wall of the pub by the throat. Holding him fast with one hand, he pulled out his wand.

  “Harry!” squealed Hermione.

  “You took that from Sirius’s house,” said Harry, who was almost nose to nose with Mundungus and was breathing in an unpleasant smell of old tobacco and spirits. “That had the Black family crest on it.”

  “I—no—what—?” spluttered Mundungus, who was slowly turning purple.

  “What did you do, go back the night he died and strip the place?” snarled Harry.

  “I—no—”

  “Give it to me!”

  “Harry, you mustn’t!” shrieked Hermione, as Mundungus started to turn blue.

  There was a bang, and Harry felt his hands fly off Mundungus’s throat. Gasping and spluttering, Mundungus seized his fallen case, then—CRACK—he Disapparated.

  Harry swore at the top of his voice, spinning on the spot to see where Mundungus had gone.

  “COME BACK, YOU THIEVING—!”

  “There’s no point, Harry.”

  Tonks had appeared out of nowhere, her mousy hair wet with sleet.

  “Mundungus will probably be in London by now. There’s no point yelling.”

  “He’s nicked Sirius’s stuff! Nicked it!”

  “Yes, but still,” said Tonks, who seemed perfectly untroubled by this piece of information. “You should get out of the cold.”

  She watched them go through the door of the Three Broomsticks. The moment he was inside, Harry burst out, “He was nicking Sirius’s stuff!”

  “I know, Harry, but please don’t shout, people are staring,” whispered Hermione. “Go and sit down, I’ll get you a drink.”

  Harry was still fuming when Hermione returned to their table a few minutes later holding three bottles of butterbeer.

  “Can’t the Order control Mundungus?” Harry demanded of the other two in a furious whisper. “Can’t they at least stop him stealing everything that’s not fixed down when he’s at headquarters?”

  “Shh!” said Hermione desperately, looking around to make sure nobody was listening; there were a couple of warlocks sitting close by who were staring at Harry with great interest, and Zabini was lolling against a pillar not far away. “Harry, I’d be annoyed too, I know it’s your things he’s stealing—”

  Harry gagged on his butterbeer; he had momentarily forgotten that he owned number twelve, Grimmauld Place.

  “Yeah, it’s my stuff!” he said. “No wonder he wasn’t pleased to see me! Well, I’m going to tell Dumbledore what’s going on, he’s the only one who scares Mundungus.”

  “Good idea,” whispered Hermione, clearly pleased that Harry was calming down. “Ron, what are you staring at?”

  “Nothing,” said Ron, hastily looking away from the bar, but Harry knew he was trying to catch the eye of the curvy and attractive barmaid, Madam Rosmerta, for whom he had long nursed a soft spot.r />
  “I expect ‘nothing’s’ in the back getting more firewhisky,” said Hermione waspishly.

  Ron ignored this jibe, sipping his drink in what he evidently considered to be a dignified silence. Harry was thinking about Sirius, and how he had hated those silver goblets anyway. Hermione drummed her fingers on the table, her eyes flickering between Ron and the bar. The moment Harry drained the last drops in his bottle she said, “Shall we call it a day and go back to school, then?”

  The other two nodded; it had not been a fun trip and the weather was getting worse the longer they stayed. Once again they drew their cloaks tightly around them, rearranged their scarves, pulled on their gloves, then followed Katie Bell and a friend out of the pub and back up the High Street. Harry’s thoughts strayed to Ginny as they trudged up the road to Hogwarts through the frozen slush. They had not met up with her, undoubtedly, thought Harry, because she and Dean were cozily closeted in Madam Puddifoot’s Tea Shop, that haunt of happy couples. Scowling, he bowed his head against the swirling sleet and trudged on.

  It was a little while before Harry became aware that the voices of Katie Bell and her friend, which were being carried back to him on the wind, had become shriller and louder. Harry squinted at their indistinct figures. The two girls were having an argument about something Katie was holding in her hand. “It’s nothing to do with you, Leanne!” Harry heard Katie say.

  They rounded a corner in the lane, sleet coming thick and fast, blurring Harry’s glasses. Just as he raised a gloved hand to wipe them, Leanne made to grab hold of the package Katie was holding; Katie tugged it back and the package fell to the ground.

  At once, Katie rose into the air, not as Ron had done, suspended comically by the ankle, but gracefully, her arms outstretched, as though she was about to fly. Yet there was something wrong, something eerie… Her hair was whipped around her by the fierce wind, but her eyes were closed and her face was quite empty of expression. Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Leanne had all halted in their tracks, watching.

  Then, six feet above the ground, Katie let out a terrible scream. Her eyes flew open but whatever she could see, or whatever she was feeling, was clearly causing her terrible anguish. She screamed and screamed; Leanne started to scream too and seized Katie’s ankles, trying to tug her back to the ground. Harry, Ron, and Hermione rushed forward to help, but even as they grabbed Katie’s legs, she fell on top of them; Harry and Ron managed to catch her but she was writhing so much they could hardly hold her. Instead they lowered her to the ground where she thrashed and screamed, apparently unable to recognize any of them.

 

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