The Half-Blood Prince Read online

  ‘So how’s McLaggen shaping up?’ he asked Harry nervously, apparently forgetting that he had already asked the same question twice.

  ‘I’ve told you,’ said Harry patiently, ‘he could be world class and I wouldn’t want to keep him. He keeps trying to tell everyone what to do, he thinks he could play every position better than the rest of us. I can’t wait to be shot of him. And speaking of getting shot of people,’ Harry added, getting to his feet and picking up his Firebolt, ‘will you stop pretending to be asleep when Lavender comes to see you? She’s driving me mad as well.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ron, looking sheepish. ‘Yeah. All right.’

  ‘If you don’t want to go out with her any more, just tell her,’ said Harry.

  ‘Yeah … well … it’s not that easy, is it?’ said Ron. He paused. ‘Hermione going to look in before the match?’ he added casually.

  ‘No, she’s already gone down to the pitch with Ginny.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ron, looking rather glum. ‘Right. Well, good luck. Hope you hammer McLag— I mean, Smith.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ said Harry, shouldering his broom. ‘See you after the match.’

  He hurried down through the deserted corridors; the whole school was outside, either already seated in the stadium or heading down towards it. He was looking out of the windows he passed, trying to gauge how much wind they were facing, when a noise ahead made him glance up and he saw Malfoy walking towards him, accompanied by two girls, both of whom looked sulky and resentful.

  Malfoy stopped short at the sight of Harry, then gave a short, humourless laugh and continued walking.

  ‘Where’re you going?’ Harry demanded.

  ‘Yeah, I’m really going to tell you, because it’s your business, Potter,’ sneered Malfoy. ‘You’d better hurry up, they’ll be waiting for the Chosen Captain – the Boy Who Scored – whatever they call you these days.’

  One of the girls gave an unwilling giggle. Harry stared at her. She blushed. Malfoy pushed past Harry and she and her friend followed at a trot, turning the corner and vanishing from view.

  Harry stood rooted on the spot and watched them disappear. This was infuriating; he was already cutting it fine to get to the match on time and yet there was Malfoy, skulking off while the rest of the school was absent: Harry’s best chance yet of discovering what Malfoy was up to. The silent seconds trickled past, and Harry remained where he was, frozen, gazing at the place where Malfoy had vanished …

  ‘Where have you been?’ demanded Ginny, as Harry sprinted into the changing room. The whole team was changed and ready; Coote and Peakes, the Beaters, were both hitting their clubs nervously against their legs.

  ‘I met Malfoy,’ Harry told her quietly, as he pulled his scarlet robes over his head.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I wanted to know how come he’s up at the castle with a couple of girlfriends while everyone else is down here …’

  ‘Does it matter right now?’

  ‘Well, I’m not likely to find out, am I?’ said Harry, seizing his Firebolt and pushing his glasses straight. ‘Come on, then!’

  And without another word, he marched out on to the pitch to deafening cheers and boos. There was little wind; the clouds were patchy; every now and then there were dazzling flashes of bright sunlight.

  ‘Tricky conditions!’ McLaggen said bracingly to the team. ‘Coote, Peakes, you’ll want to fly out of the sun, so they don’t see you coming –’

  ‘I’m the Captain, McLaggen, shut up giving them instructions,’ said Harry angrily. ‘Just get up by the goalposts!’

  Once McLaggen had marched off, Harry turned to Coote and Peakes.

  ‘Make sure you do fly out of the sun,’ he told them grudgingly.

  He shook hands with the Hufflepuff Captain, and then, on Madam Hooch’s whistle, kicked off and rose into the air, higher than the rest of his team, streaking around the pitch in search of the Snitch. If he could catch it good and early, there might be a chance he could get back up to the castle, seize the Marauder’s Map and find out what Malfoy was doing …

  ‘And that’s Smith of Hufflepuff with the Quaffle,’ said a dreamy voice, echoing over the grounds. ‘He did the commentary last time, of course, and Ginny Weasley flew into him, I think probably on purpose – it looked like it. Smith was being quite rude about Gryffindor, I expect he regrets that now he’s playing them – oh, look, he’s lost the Quaffle, Ginny took it from him, I do like her, she’s very nice …’

  Harry stared down at the commentator’s podium. Surely, nobody in their right mind would have let Luna Lovegood commentate? But even from above there was no mistaking that long, dirty-blonde hair, or the necklace of Butterbeer corks … Beside Luna, Professor McGonagall was looking slightly uncomfortable, as though she was indeed having second thoughts about this appointment.

  ‘… but now that big Hufflepuff player’s got the Quaffle from her, I can’t remember his name, it’s something like Bibble – no, Buggins –’

  ‘It’s Cadwallader!’ said Professor McGonagall loudly from beside Luna. The crowd laughed.

  Harry stared around for the Snitch; there was no sign of it. Moments later, Cadwallader scored. McLaggen had been shouting criticism at Ginny for allowing the Quaffle out of her possession, with the result that he had not noticed the large red ball soaring past his right ear.

  ‘McLaggen, will you pay attention to what you’re supposed to be doing and leave everyone else alone!’ bellowed Harry, wheeling round to face his Keeper.

  ‘You’re not setting a great example!’ McLaggen shouted back, red-faced and furious.

  ‘And Harry Potter’s now having an argument with his Keeper,’ said Luna serenely, while both Hufflepuffs and Slytherins below in the crowd cheered and jeered. ‘I don’t think that’ll help him find the Snitch, but maybe it’s a clever ruse …’

  Swearing angrily, Harry spun round and set off around the pitch again, scanning the skies for some sign of the tiny winged golden ball.

  Ginny and Demelza scored a goal apiece, giving the red-and-gold-clad supporters below something to cheer about. Then Cadwallader scored again, making things level, but Luna did not seem to have noticed; she appeared singularly uninterested in such mundane things as the score, and kept attempting to draw the crowd’s attention to such things as interestingly shaped clouds and the possibility that Zacharias Smith, who had so far failed to maintain possession of the Quaffle for longer than a minute, was suffering from something called ‘Loser’s Lurgy’.

  ‘Seventy–forty to Hufflepuff!’ barked Professor McGonagall into Luna’s megaphone.

  ‘Is it, already?’ said Luna vaguely. ‘Oh, look! The Gryffindor Keeper’s got hold of one of the Beater’s bats.’

  Harry spun round in midair. Sure enough, McLaggen, for reasons best known to himself, had pulled Peakes’s bat from him and appeared to be demonstrating how to hit a Bludger towards an oncoming Cadwallader.

  ‘Will you give him back his bat and get back to the goalposts!’ roared Harry, pelting towards McLaggen just as McLaggen took a ferocious swipe at the Bludger and mis-hit it.

  A blinding, sickening pain … a flash of light … distant screams … and the sensation of falling down a long tunnel …

  And the next thing Harry knew, he was lying in a remarkably warm and comfortable bed and looking up at a lamp that was throwing a circle of golden light on to a shadowy ceiling. He raised his head awkwardly. There on his left was a familiar-looking, freckly, red-haired person.

  ‘Nice of you to drop in,’ said Ron, grinning.

  Harry blinked and looked around. Of course: he was in the hospital wing. The sky outside was indigo streaked with crimson. The match must have finished hours ago … as had any hope of cornering Malfoy. Harry’s head felt strangely heavy; he raised a hand and felt a stiff turban of bandages.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Cracked skull,’ said Madam Pomfrey, bustling up and pushing him back against his pillows. ‘Nothing to worry about, I me
nded it at once, but I’m keeping you in overnight. You shouldn’t overexert yourself for a few hours.’

  ‘I don’t want to stay here overnight,’ said Harry angrily, sitting up and throwing back his covers, ‘I want to find McLaggen and kill him.’

  ‘I’m afraid that would come under the heading of “overexertion”,’ said Madam Pomfrey, pushing him firmly back on to the bed and raising her wand in a threatening manner. ‘You will stay here until I discharge you, Potter, or I shall call the Headmaster.’

  She bustled back into her office and Harry sank back into his pillows, fuming.

  ‘D’you know how much we lost by?’ he asked Ron through clenched teeth.

  ‘Well, yeah I do,’ said Ron apologetically. ‘Final score was three hundred and twenty to sixty.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Harry savagely. ‘Really brilliant! When I get hold of McLaggen –’

  ‘You don’t want to get hold of him, he’s the size of a troll,’ said Ron reasonably. ‘Personally I think there’s a lot to be said for hexing him with that toenail thing of the Prince’s. Anyway, the rest of the team might’ve dealt with him before you get out of here, they’re not happy …’

  There was a note of badly suppressed glee in Ron’s voice; Harry could tell he was nothing short of thrilled that McLaggen had messed up so badly. Harry lay there, staring up at the patch of light on the ceiling, his recently mended skull not hurting, precisely, but feeling slightly tender underneath all the bandaging.

  ‘I could hear the match commentary from here,’ said Ron, his voice now shaking with laughter. ‘I hope Luna always commentates from now on … Loser’s Lurgy …’

  But Harry was still too angry to see much humour in the situation, and after a while Ron’s snorts subsided.

  ‘Ginny came in to visit while you were unconscious,’ he said, after a long pause, and Harry’s imagination zoomed into overdrive, rapidly constructing a scene in which Ginny, weeping over his lifeless form, confessed her feelings of deep attraction to him while Ron gave them his blessing … ‘She reckons you only just arrived in time for the match. How come? You left here early enough.’

  ‘Oh …’ said Harry, as the scene in his mind’s eye imploded. ‘Yeah … well, I saw Malfoy sneaking off with a couple of girls who didn’t look like they wanted to be with him, and that’s the second time he’s made sure he isn’t down on the Quidditch pitch with the rest of the school. He skipped the last match too, remember?’ Harry sighed. ‘Wish I’d followed him now, the match was such a fiasco …’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Ron sharply. ‘You couldn’t have missed a Quidditch match just to follow Malfoy, you’re the Captain!’

  ‘I want to know what he’s up to,’ said Harry. ‘And don’t tell me it’s all in my head, not after what I overheard between him and Snape –’

  ‘I never said it was all in your head,’ said Ron, hoisting himself up on an elbow in turn and frowning at Harry, ‘but there’s no rule saying only one person at a time can be plotting anything in this place! You’re getting a bit obsessed with Malfoy, Harry. I mean, thinking about missing a match just to follow him …’

  ‘I want to catch him at it!’ said Harry in frustration. ‘I mean, where’s he going when he disappears off the map?’

  ‘I dunno … Hogsmeade?’ suggested Ron, yawning.

  ‘I’ve never seen him going along any of the secret passageways on the map. I thought they were being watched now, anyway?’

  ‘Well, then, I dunno,’ said Ron.

  Silence fell between them. Harry stared up at the circle of lamplight above him, thinking …

  If only he had Rufus Scrimgeour’s power, he would have been able to set a tail upon Malfoy, but unfortunately Harry did not have an office full of Aurors at his command … he thought fleetingly of trying to set something up with the DA, but there again was the problem that people would be missed from lessons; most of them, after all, still had full timetables …

  There was a low, rumbling snore from Ron’s bed. After a while Madam Pomfrey came out of her office, this time wearing a thick dressing-gown. It was easiest to feign sleep; Harry rolled over on to his side and listened to all the curtains closing themselves as she waved her wand. The lamps dimmed, and she returned to her office; he heard the door click behind her, and knew that she was off to bed.

  This was, Harry reflected in the darkness, the third time that he had been brought to the hospital wing because of a Quidditch injury. Last time he had fallen off his broom due to the presence of Dementors around the pitch, and the time before that, all the bones had been removed from his arm by the incurably inept Professor Lockhart … that had been his most painful injury by far … he remembered the agony of regrowing an armful of bones in one night, a discomfort not eased by the arrival of an unexpected visitor in the middle of the –

  Harry sat bolt upright, his heart pounding, his bandage turban askew. He had the solution at last: there was a way to have Malfoy followed – how could he have forgotten, why hadn’t he thought of it before?

  But the question was, how to call him? What did you do?

  Quietly, tentatively, Harry spoke into the darkness.

  ‘Kreacher?’

  There was a very loud crack and the sounds of scuffling and squeaks filled the silent room. Ron awoke with a yelp.

  ‘What’s going –?’

  Harry pointed his wand hastily at the door of Madam Pomfrey’s office and muttered ‘Muffliato!’ so that she would not come running. Then he scrambled to the end of his bed for a better look at what was going on.

  Two house-elves were rolling around on the floor in the middle of the dormitory, one wearing a shrunken maroon jumper and several woolly hats, the other, a filthy old rag strung over his hips like a loincloth. Then there was another loud bang, and Peeves the poltergeist appeared in midair above the wrestling elves.

  ‘I was watching that, Potty!’ he told Harry indignantly, pointing at the fight below, before letting out a loud cackle. ‘Look at the ickle creatures squabbling, bitey bitey, punchy punchy –’

  ‘Kreacher will not insult Harry Potter in front of Dobby, no he won’t, or Dobby will shut Kreacher’s mouth for him!’ cried Dobby in a high-pitched voice.

  ‘– kicky, scratchy!’ cried Peeves happily, now pelting bits of chalk at the elves to enrage them further. ‘Tweaky, pokey!’

  ‘Kreacher will say what he likes about his master, oh yes, and what a master he is, filthy friend of Mudbloods, oh, what would poor Kreacher’s mistress say –?’

  Exactly what Kreacher’s mistress would have said they did not find out, for at that moment Dobby sank his knobbly little fist into Kreacher’s mouth and knocked out half of his teeth. Harry and Ron both leapt out of their beds and wrenched the two elves apart, though they continued to try to kick and punch each other, egged on by Peeves, who swooped around the lamp squealing, ‘Stick your fingers up his nosey, draw his cork and pull his earsies –’

  Harry aimed his wand at Peeves and said, ‘Langlock!’ Peeves clutched at his throat, gulped, then swooped from the room making obscene gestures but unable to speak, owing to the fact that his tongue had just glued itself to the roof of his mouth.

  ‘Nice one,’ said Ron appreciatively, lifting Dobby into the air so that his flailing limbs no longer made contact with Kreacher. ‘That was another Prince hex, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Harry, twisting Kreacher’s wizened arm into a half-nelson. ‘Right – I’m forbidding you to fight each other! Well, Kreacher, you’re forbidden to fight Dobby. Dobby, I know I’m not allowed to give you orders –’

  ‘Dobby is a free house-elf and he can obey anyone he likes and Dobby will do whatever Harry Potter wants him to do!’ said Dobby, tears now streaming down his shrivelled little face on to his jumper.

  ‘OK, then,’ said Harry and he and Ron both released the elves, who fell to the floor, but did not continue fighting.

  ‘Master called me?’ croaked Kreacher, sinking into a bow even as he g
ave Harry a look that plainly wished him a painful death.

  ‘Yeah, I did,’ said Harry, glancing towards Madam Pomfrey’s office door to check that the Muffliato spell was still working; there was no sign that she had heard any of the commotion. ‘I’ve got a job for you.’

  ‘Kreacher will do whatever Master wants,’ said Kreacher, sinking so low that his lips almost touched his gnarled toes, ‘because Kreacher has no choice, but Kreacher is ashamed to have such a Master, yes –’

  ‘Dobby will do it, Harry Potter!’ squeaked Dobby, his tennis-ball-sized eyes still swimming with tears. ‘Dobby would be honoured to help Harry Potter!’

  ‘Come to think of it, it would be good to have both of you,’ said Harry. ‘OK, then … I want you to tail Draco Malfoy.’

  Ignoring the look of mingled surprise and exasperation on Ron’s face, Harry went on, ‘I want to know where he’s going, who he’s meeting and what he’s doing. I want you to follow him around the clock.’

  ‘Yes, Harry Potter!’ said Dobby at once, his great eyes shining with excitement. ‘And if Dobby does it wrong, Dobby will throw himself off the topmost tower, Harry Potter!’

  ‘There won’t be any need for that,’ said Harry hastily.

  ‘Master wants me to follow the youngest of the Malfoys?’ croaked Kreacher. ‘Master wants me to spy upon the pureblood great-nephew of my old mistress?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Harry, foreseeing a great danger and determining to prevent it immediately. ‘And you’re forbidden to tip him off, Kreacher, or to show him what you’re up to, or to talk to him at all, or to write him messages, or … or to contact him in any way. Got it?’

  He thought he could see Kreacher struggling to see a loophole in the instructions he had just been given, and waited. After a moment or two, and to Harry’s great satisfaction, Kreacher bowed deeply again and said, with bitter resentment, ‘Master thinks of everything and Kreacher must obey him even though Kreacher would much rather be the servant of the Malfoy boy, oh yes …’