The Half-Blood Prince Read online

  Harry said nothing. It had already occurred to him that this would be the most likely objection to his new evidence; he could hear Hermione now:

  ‘Obviously, Harry, he was pretending to offer help so he could trick Malfoy into telling him what he’s doing …’

  This was pure imagination, however, as he had had no opportunity to tell Hermione what he had overheard. She had disappeared from Slughorn’s party before he returned to it, or so he had been informed by an irate McLaggen, and she had already gone to bed by the time he returned to the common room. As he and Ron had left for The Burrow early the next day, he had barely had time to wish her a Happy Christmas and to tell her that he had some very important news when they got back from the holidays. He was not entirely sure that she had heard him, though; Ron and Lavender had been saying a thoroughly non-verbal goodbye just behind him at the time.

  Still, even Hermione would not be able to deny one thing: Malfoy was definitely up to something, and Snape knew it, so Harry felt fully justified in saying ‘I told you so’, which he had done several times to Ron already.

  Harry did not get the chance to speak to Mr Weasley, who was working very long hours at the Ministry, until Christmas Eve night. The Weasleys and their guests were sitting in the living room, which Ginny had decorated so lavishly that it was rather like sitting in a paper-chain explosion. Fred, George, Harry and Ron were the only ones who knew that the angel on top of the tree was actually a garden gnome that had bitten Fred on the ankle as he pulled up carrots for Christmas dinner. Stupefied, painted gold, stuffed into a miniature tutu and with small wings glued to its back, it glowered down at them all, the ugliest angel Harry had ever seen, with a large bald head like a potato and rather hairy feet.

  They were all supposed to be listening to a Christmas broadcast by Mrs Weasley’s favourite singer, Celestina Warbeck, whose voice was warbling out of the large wooden wireless. Fleur, who seemed to find Celestina very dull, was talking so loudly in the corner that a scowling Mrs Weasley kept pointing her wand at the volume control, so that Celestina grew louder and louder. Under cover of a particularly jazzy number called ‘A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love’, Fred and George started a game of Exploding Snap with Ginny. Ron kept shooting Bill and Fleur covert looks, as though hoping to pick up tips. Meanwhile Remus Lupin, who was thinner and more ragged-looking than ever, was sitting beside the fire, staring into its depths as though he could not hear Celestina’s voice.

  ‘Oh, come and stir my cauldron,

  And if you do it right

  I’ll boil you up some hot, strong love

  To keep you warm tonight.’

  ‘We danced to this when we were eighteen!’ said Mrs Weasley, wiping her eyes on her knitting. ‘Do you remember, Arthur?’

  ‘Mphf?’ said Mr Weasley, whose head had been nodding over the satsuma he was peeling. ‘Oh yes … marvellous tune …’

  With an effort he sat up a little straighter and looked round at Harry, who was sitting next to him.

  ‘Sorry about this,’ he said, jerking his head towards the wireless as Celestina broke into the chorus. ‘Be over soon.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Harry, grinning. ‘Has it been busy at the Ministry?’

  ‘Very,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘I wouldn’t mind if we were getting anywhere, but of the three arrests we’ve made in the last couple of months, I doubt that one of them is a genuine Death Eater – only don’t repeat that, Harry,’ he added quickly, looking much more awake all of a sudden.

  ‘They’re not still holding Stan Shunpike, are they?’ asked Harry.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘I know Dumbledore’s tried appealing directly to Scrimgeour about Stan … I mean, anybody who has actually interviewed him agrees that he’s about as much a Death Eater as this satsuma … but the top levels want to look as though they’re making some progress, and “three arrests” sounds better than “three mistaken arrests and releases” … but again, this is all top secret …’

  ‘I won’t say anything,’ said Harry. He hesitated for a moment, wondering how best to embark on what he wanted to say; as he marshalled his thoughts, Celestina Warbeck began a ballad called ‘You Charmed the Heart Right Out of Me’.

  ‘Mr Weasley, you know what I told you at the station when we were setting off for school?’

  ‘I checked, Harry,’ said Mr Weasley at once. ‘I went and searched the Malfoys’ house. There was nothing, either broken or whole, that shouldn’t have been there.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, I saw in the Prophet that you’d looked … but this is something different … well, something more …’

  And he told Mr Weasley everything he had overheard between Malfoy and Snape. As Harry spoke, he saw Lupin’s head turn a little towards him, taking in every word. When he had finished, there was silence, except for Celestina’s crooning.

  ‘Oh, my poor heart, where has it gone?

  It’s left me for a spell …’

  ‘Has it occurred to you, Harry,’ said Mr Weasley, ‘that Snape was simply pretending –’

  ‘Pretending to offer help, so that he could find out what Malfoy’s up to?’ said Harry quickly. ‘Yeah, I thought you’d say that. But how do we know?’

  ‘It isn’t our business to know,’ said Lupin unexpectedly. He had turned his back on the fire now, and faced Harry across Mr Weasley. ‘It’s Dumbledore’s business. Dumbledore trusts Severus, and that ought to be good enough for all of us.’

  ‘But,’ said Harry, ‘just say – just say Dumbledore’s wrong about Snape –’

  ‘People have said it, many times. It comes down to whether or not you trust Dumbledore’s judgement. I do; therefore, I trust Severus.’

  ‘But Dumbledore can make mistakes,’ argued Harry. ‘He says it himself. And you –’

  He looked Lupin straight in the eye.

  ‘– do you honestly like Snape?’

  ‘I neither like nor dislike Severus,’ said Lupin. ‘No, Harry, I am speaking the truth,’ he added, as Harry pulled a sceptical expression. ‘We shall never be bosom friends, perhaps; after all that happened between James and Sirius and Severus, there is too much bitterness there. But I do not forget that during the year I taught at Hogwarts, Severus made the Wolfsbane Potion for me every month, made it perfectly, so that I did not have to suffer as I usually do at the full moon.’

  ‘But he “accidentally” let it slip that you’re a werewolf, so you had to leave!’ said Harry angrily.

  Lupin shrugged.

  ‘The news would have leaked out anyway. We both know he wanted my job, but he could have wreaked much worse damage on me by tampering with the Potion. He kept me healthy. I must be grateful.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t dare mess with the Potion with Dumbledore watching him!’ said Harry.

  ‘You are determined to hate him, Harry,’ said Lupin with a faint smile. ‘And I understand; with James as your father, with Sirius as your godfather, you have inherited an old prejudice. By all means tell Dumbledore what you have told Arthur and me, but do not expect him to share your view of the matter; do not even expect him to be surprised by what you tell him. It might have been on Dumbledore’s orders that Severus questioned Draco.’

  ‘…and now you’ve torn it quite apart

  I’ll thank you to give back my heart!’

  Celestina ended her song on a very long, high-pitched note and loud applause issued out of the wireless, which Mrs Weasley joined in with enthusiastically.

  ‘Eez eet over?’ said Fleur loudly. ‘Thank goodness, what an ’orrible –’

  ‘Shall we have a nightcap, then?’ asked Mr Weasley loudly, leaping to his feet. ‘Who wants egg-nog?’

  ‘What have you been up to lately?’ Harry asked Lupin, as Mr Weasley bustled off to fetch the egg-nog and everybody else stretched and broke into conversation.

  ‘Oh, I’ve been underground,’ said Lupin. ‘Almost literally. That’s why I haven’t been able to write, Harry; sending letters to you would have been something
of a give-away.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve been living among my fellows, my equals,’ said Lupin. ‘Werewolves,’ he added, at Harry’s look of incomprehension. ‘Nearly all of them are on Voldemort’s side. Dumbledore wanted a spy and here I was … ready-made.’

  He sounded a little bitter, and perhaps realised it, for he smiled more warmly as he went on, ‘I am not complaining; it is necessary work and who can do it better than I? However, it has been difficult gaining their trust. I bear the unmistakeable signs of having tried to live among wizards, you see, whereas they have shunned normal society and live on the margins, stealing – and sometimes killing – to eat.’

  ‘How come they like Voldemort?’

  ‘They think that, under his rule, they will have a better life,’ said Lupin. ‘And it is hard to argue with Greyback out there …’

  ‘Who’s Greyback?’

  ‘You haven’t heard of him?’ Lupin’s hands closed convulsively in his lap. ‘Fenrir Greyback is, perhaps, the most savage werewolf alive today. He regards it as his mission in life to bite and to contaminate as many people as possible; he wants to create enough werewolves to overcome the wizards. Voldemort has promised him prey in return for his services. Greyback specialises in children … bite them young, he says, and raise them away from their parents, raise them to hate normal wizards. Voldemort has threatened to unleash him upon people’s sons and daughters; it is a threat that usually produces good results.’

  Lupin paused and then said, ‘It was Greyback who bit me.’

  ‘What?’ said Harry, astonished. ‘When – when you were a kid, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. My father had offended him. I did not know, for a very long time, the identity of the werewolf who had attacked me; I even felt pity for him, thinking that he had had no control, knowing by then how it felt to transform. But Greyback is not like that. At the full moon he positions himself close to victims, ensuring that he is near enough to strike. He plans it all. And this is the man Voldemort is using to marshal the werewolves. I cannot pretend that my particular brand of reasoned argument is making much headway against Greyback’s insistence that we werewolves deserve blood, that we ought to revenge ourselves on normal people.’

  ‘But you are normal!’ said Harry fiercely. ‘You’ve just got a – a problem –’

  Lupin burst out laughing.

  ‘Sometimes you remind me a lot of James. He called it my “furry little problem” in company. Many people were under the impression that I owned a badly behaved rabbit.’

  He accepted a glass of egg-nog from Mr Weasley with a word of thanks, looking slightly more cheerful. Harry, meanwhile, felt a rush of excitement: this last mention of his father had reminded him that there was something he had been looking forward to asking Lupin.

  ‘Have you ever heard of someone called the Half-Blood Prince?’

  ‘The Half-Blood what?’

  ‘Prince,’ said Harry, watching him closely for signs of recognition.

  ‘There are no wizarding princes,’ said Lupin, now smiling. ‘Is this a title you’re thinking of adopting? I should have thought being the “Chosen One” would be enough.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me!’ said Harry indignantly. ‘The Half-Blood Prince is someone who used to go to Hogwarts, I’ve got his old Potions book. He wrote spells all over it, spells he invented. One of them was Levicorpus –’

  ‘Oh, that one had a great vogue during my time at Hogwarts,’ said Lupin reminiscently. ‘There were a few months in my fifth year when you couldn’t move for being hoisted into the air by your ankle.’

  ‘My dad used it,’ said Harry. ‘I saw him in the Pensieve, he used it on Snape.’

  He tried to sound casual, as though this was a throwaway comment of no real importance, but he was not sure he had achieved the right effect; Lupin’s smile was a little too understanding.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but he wasn’t the only one. As I say, it was very popular … you know how these spells come and go …’

  ‘But it sounds like it was invented while you were at school,’ Harry persisted.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Lupin. ‘Jinxes go in and out of fashion like everything else.’ He looked into Harry’s face and then said quietly, ‘James was a pure-blood, Harry, and I promise you, he never asked us to call him “Prince”.’

  Abandoning pretence, Harry said, ‘And it wasn’t Sirius? Or you?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘Oh.’ Harry stared into the fire. ‘I just thought – well, he’s helped me out a lot in Potions classes, the Prince has.’

  ‘How old is this book, Harry?’

  ‘I dunno, I’ve never checked.’

  ‘Well, perhaps that will give you some clue as to when the Prince was at Hogwarts,’ said Lupin.

  Shortly after this, Fleur decided to imitate Celestina singing ‘A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love’, which was taken by everyone, once they had glimpsed Mrs Weasley’s expression, to be the cue to go to bed. Harry and Ron climbed all the way up to Ron’s attic bedroom, where a camp bed had been added for Harry.

  Ron fell asleep almost immediately, but Harry delved into his trunk and pulled out his copy of Advanced Potion-Making before getting into bed. There he turned its pages, searching, until he finally found, at the front of the book, the date that it had been published. It was nearly fifty years old. Neither his father, nor his father’s friends, had been at Hogwarts fifty years ago. Feeling disappointed, Harry threw the book back into his trunk, turned off the lamp and rolled over, thinking of werewolves and Snape, Stan Shunpike and the Half-Blood Prince, and finally falling into an uneasy sleep full of creeping shadows and the cries of bitten children …

  ‘She’s got to be joking …’

  Harry woke with a start to find a bulging stocking lying over the end of his bed. He put on his glasses and looked around; the tiny window was almost completely obscured with snow and in front of it Ron was sitting bolt upright in bed and examining what appeared to be a thick gold chain.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Harry.

  ‘It’s from Lavender,’ said Ron, sounding revolted. ‘She can’t honestly think I’d wear …’

  Harry looked more closely and let out a shout of laughter. Dangling from the chain in large gold letters were the words ‘My Sweetheart’.

  ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Classy. You should definitely wear it in front of Fred and George.’

  ‘If you tell them,’ said Ron, shoving the necklace out of sight under his pillow, ‘I – I – I’ll –’

  ‘Stutter at me?’ said Harry, grinning. ‘Come on, would I?’

  ‘How could she think I’d like something like that, though?’ Ron demanded of thin air, looking rather shocked.

  ‘Well, think back,’ said Harry. ‘Have you ever let it slip that you’d like to go out in public with the words “My Sweetheart” round your neck?’

  ‘Well … we don’t really talk much,’ said Ron. ‘It’s mainly …’

  ‘Snogging,’ said Harry.

  ‘Well, yeah,’ said Ron. He hesitated a moment, then said, ‘Is Hermione really going out with McLaggen?’

  ‘I dunno,’ said Harry. ‘They were at Slughorn’s party together, but I don’t think it went that well.’

  Ron looked slightly more cheerful as he delved deeper into his stocking.

  Harry’s presents included a sweater with a large Golden Snitch worked on to the front, hand-knitted by Mrs Weasley, a large box of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes products from the twins and a slightly damp, mouldy-smelling package which came with a label reading: ‘To Master, from Kreacher’.

  Harry stared at it. ‘D’you reckon this is safe to open?’ he asked.

  ‘Can’t be anything dangerous, all our mail’s still being searched at the Ministry,’ replied Ron, though he was eyeing the parcel suspiciously.

  ‘I didn’t think of giving Kreacher anything! Do people usually give their house-elves Christmas presents?’ asked Harry,
prodding the parcel cautiously.

  ‘Hermione would,’ said Ron. ‘But let’s wait and see what it is before you start feeling guilty.’

  A moment later, Harry had given a loud yell and leapt out of his camp bed; the package contained a large number of maggots.

  ‘Nice,’ said Ron, roaring with laughter. ‘Very thoughtful.’

  ‘I’d rather have them than that necklace,’ said Harry, which sobered Ron up at once.

  Everybody was wearing new sweaters when they all sat down for Christmas lunch, everyone except Fleur (on whom, it appeared, Mrs Weasley had not wanted to waste one) and Mrs Weasley herself, who was sporting a brand new midnight-blue witch’s hat glittering with what looked like tiny starlike diamonds, and a spectacular golden necklace.

  ‘Fred and George gave them to me! Aren’t they beautiful?’

  ‘Well, we find we appreciate you more and more, Mum, now we’re washing our own socks,’ said George, waving an airy hand. ‘Parsnips, Remus?’

  ‘Harry, you’ve got a maggot in your hair,’ said Ginny cheerfully, leaning across the table to pick it out; Harry felt goosebumps erupt up his neck that had nothing to do with the maggot.

  ‘’Ow ’orrible,’ said Fleur, with an affected little shudder.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ said Ron. ‘Gravy, Fleur?’

  In his eagerness to help her, he knocked the gravy boat flying; Bill waved his wand and the gravy soared up in the air and returned meekly to the boat.

  ‘You are as bad as zat Tonks,’ said Fleur to Ron, when she had finished kissing Bill in thanks. ‘She is always knocking –’

  ‘I invited dear Tonks to come along today,’ said Mrs Weasley, setting down the carrots with unnecessary force and glaring at Fleur. ‘But she wouldn’t come. Have you spoken to her lately, Remus?’

  ‘No, I haven’t been in contact with anybody very much,’ said Lupin. ‘But Tonks has got her own family to go to, hasn’t she?’