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

  “Now then,” said Hepzibah happily, “where’s Hokey? Oh yes, there you are—take that away now, Hokey.”

  The elf obediently took the boxed cup, and Hepzibah turned her attention to the much flatter box in her lap.

  “I think you’ll like this even more, Tom,” she whispered. “Lean in a little, dear boy, so you can see… Of course, Burke knows I’ve got this one, I bought it from him, and I daresay he’d love to get it back when I’m gone…”

  She slid back the fine filigree clasp and flipped open the box. There upon the smooth crimson velvet lay a heavy golden locket.

  Voldemort reached out his hand, without invitation this time, and held it up to the light, staring at it.

  “Slytherin’s mark,” he said quietly, as the light played upon an ornate, serpentine S.

  “That’s right!” said Hepzibah, delighted, apparently, at the sight of Voldemort gazing at her locket, transfixed. “I had to pay an arm and a leg for it, but I couldn’t let it pass, not a real treasure like that, had to have it for my collection. Burke bought it, apparently, from a ragged-looking woman who seemed to have stolen it, but had no idea of its true value—”

  There was no mistaking it this time: Voldemort’s eyes flashed scarlet at the words, and Harry saw his knuckles whiten on the locket’s chain.

  “—I daresay Burke paid her a pittance but there you are… Pretty, isn’t it? And again, all kinds of powers attributed to it, though I just keep it nice and safe…”

  She reached out to take the locket back. For a moment, Harry thought Voldemort was not going to let go of it, but then it had slid through his fingers and was back in its red velvet cushion.

  “So there you are, Tom, dear, and I hope you enjoyed that!”

  She looked him full in the face and for the first time, Harry saw her foolish smile falter.

  “Are you all right, dear?”

  “Oh yes,” said Voldemort quietly. “Yes, I’m very well…”

  “I thought—but a trick of the light, I suppose—” said Hepzibah, looking unnerved, and Harry guessed that she too had seen the momentary red gleam in Voldemort’s eyes. “Here, Hokey, take these away and lock them up again… The usual enchantments…”

  “Time to leave, Harry,” said Dumbledore quietly, and as the little elf bobbed away bearing the boxes, Dumbledore grasped Harry once again above the elbow and together they rose up through oblivion and back to Dumbledore’s office.

  “Hepzibah Smith died two days after that little scene,” said Dumbledore, resuming his seat and indicating that Harry should do the same. “Hokey the house-elf was convicted by the Ministry of poisoning her mistress’s evening cocoa by accident.”

  “No way!” said Harry angrily.

  “I see we are of one mind,” said Dumbledore. “Certainly, then are many similarities between this death and that of the Riddles. In both cases, somebody else took the blame, someone who had a clear memory of having caused the death—”

  “Hokey confessed?”

  “She remembered putting something in her mistress’s cocoa that turned out not to be sugar, but a lethal and little-known poison,” said Dumbledore. “It was concluded that she had not meant to do it, but being old and confused—”

  “Voldemort modified her memory, just like he did with Morfin!”

  “Yes, that is my conclusion too,” said Dumbledore. “And, just as with Morfin, the Ministry was predisposed to suspect Hokey—”

  “—because she was a house-elf,” said Harry. He had rarely felt more in sympathy with the society Hermione had set up, S.P.E.W.

  “Precisely,” said Dumbledore. “She was old, she admitted to having tampered with the drink, and nobody at the Ministry bothered to inquire further. As in the case of Morfin, by the time I traced her and managed to extract this memory, her life was almost over—but her memory, of course, proves nothing except that Voldemort knew of the existence of the cup and the locket.

  “By the time Hokey was convicted, Hepzibah’s family had realized that two of her greatest treasures were missing. It took them a while to be sure of this, for she had many hiding places, having always guarded her collection most jealously. But before they were sure beyond doubt that the cup and the locket were both gone, the assistant who had worked at Borgin and Burkes, the young man who had visited Hepzibah so regularly and charmed her so well, had resigned his post and vanished. His superiors had no idea where he had gone; they were as surprised as anyone at his disappearance. And that was the last that was seen or heard of Tom Riddle for a very long time.

  “Now,” said Dumbledore, “if you don’t mind, Harry, I want to pause once more to draw your attention to certain points of our story. Voldemort had committed another murder; whether it was his first since he killed the Riddles, I do not know, but I think it was. This time, as you will have seen, he killed not for revenge, but for gain. He wanted the two fabulous trophies that poor, besotted, old woman showed him. Just as he had once robbed the other children at his orphanage, just as he had stolen his Uncle Morfin’s ring, so he ran off now with Hepzibah’s cup and locket.”

  “But,” said Harry, frowning, “it seems mad… Risking everything, throwing away his job, just for those…”

  “Mad to you, perhaps, but not to Voldemort,” said Dumbledore. “I hope you will understand in due course exactly what those objects meant to him, Harry, but you must admit that it is not difficult to imagine that he saw the locket, at least, as rightfully his.”

  “The locket maybe,” said Harry, “but why take the cup as well?”

  “It had belonged to another of Hogwarts’s founders,” said Dumbledore. “I think he still felt a great pull toward the school and that he could not resist an object so steeped in Hogwarts history. There were other reasons, I think… I hope to be able to demonstrate them to you in due course.

  “And now for the very last recollection I have to show you, at least until you manage to retrieve Professor Slughorn’s memory for us. Ten years separates Hokey’s memory and this one, ten years during which we can only guess at what Lord Voldemort was doing…”

  Harry got to his feet once more as Dumbledore emptied the last memory into the Pensieve.

  “Whose memory is it?” he asked.

  “Mine,” said Dumbledore.

  And Harry dived after Dumbledore through the shifting silver mass, landing in the very office he had just left. There was Fawkes slumbering happily on his perch, and there behind the desk was Dumbledore, who looked very similar to the Dumbledore standing beside Harry, though both hands were whole and undamaged and his face was, perhaps, a little less lined. The one difference between the present-day office and this one was that it was snowing in the past; bluish flecks were drifting past the window in the dark and building up on the outside ledge.

  The younger Dumbledore seemed to be waiting for something, and sure enough, moments after their arrival, there was a knock on the door and he said, “Enter.”

  Harry let out a hastily stifled gasp. Voldemort had entered the room. His features were not those Harry had seen emerge from the great stone cauldron almost two years ago: They were not as snake-like, the eyes were not yet scarlet, the face not yet masklike, and yet he was no longer handsome Tom Riddle. It was as though his features had been burned and blurred; they were waxy and oddly distorted, and the whites of the eyes now had a permanently bloody look, though the pupils were not yet the slits that Harry knew they would become. He was wearing a long black cloak, and his face was as pale as the snow glistening on his shoulders.

  The Dumbledore behind the desk showed no sign of surprise. Evidently this visit had been made by appointment.

  “Good evening, Tom,” said Dumbledore easily. “Won’t you sit down?”

  “Thank you,” said Voldemort, and he took the seat to which Dumbledore had gestured—the very seat, by the looks of it, that Harry had just vacated in the present. “I heard that you had become headmaster,” he said, and his voice was slightly higher and colder than it had been. �
��A worthy choice.”

  “I am glad you approve,” said Dumbledore, smiling. “May I offer you a drink?”

  “That would be welcome,” said Voldemort. “I have come a long way.”

  Dumbledore stood and swept over to the cabinet where he now kept the Pensieve, but which then was full of bottles. Having handed Voldemort a goblet of wine and poured one for himself, he returned to the seat behind his desk.

  “So, Tom… to what do I owe the pleasure?”

  Voldemort did not answer at once, but merely sipped his wine.

  “They do not call me ‘Tom’ anymore,” he said. “These days, I am known as—”

  “I know what you are known as,” said Dumbledore, smiling, pleasantly. “But to me, I’m afraid, you will always be Tom Riddle. It is one of the irritating things about old teachers. I am afraid that they never quite forget their charges’ youthful beginnings.”

  He raised his glass as though toasting Voldemort, whose face remained expressionless. Nevertheless, Harry felt the atmosphere in the room change subtly: Dumbledore’s refusal to use Voldemort’s chosen name was a refusal to allow Voldemort to dictate the terms of the meeting, and Harry could tell that Voldemort took it as such.

  “I am surprised you have remained here so long,” said Voldemort after a short pause. “I always wondered why a wizard such as yourself never wished to leave school.”

  “Well,” said Dumbledore, still smiling, “to a wizard such as myself, there can be nothing more important than passing on ancient skills, helping hone young minds. If I remember correctly, you once saw the attraction of teaching too.”

  “I see it still,” said Voldemort. “I merely wondered why you—who are so often asked for advice by the Ministry, and who have twice, I think, been offered the post of Minister—”

  “Three times at the last count, actually,” said Dumbledore. “But the Ministry never attracted me as a career. Again, something we have in common, I think.”

  Voldemort inclined his head, unsmiling, and took another sip of wine. Dumbledore did not break the silence that stretched between them now, but waited, with a look of pleasant expectancy, for Voldemort to talk first.

  “I have returned,” he said, after a little while, “later, perhaps, than Professor Dippet expected… but I have returned, nevertheless, to request again what he once told me I was too young to have. I have come to you to ask that you permit me to return to this castle, to teach. I think you must know that I have seen and done much since I left this place. I could show and tell your students things they can gain from no other wizard.”

  Dumbledore considered Voldemort over the top of his own goblet for a while before speaking.

  “Yes, I certainly do know that you have seen and done much since leaving us,” he said quietly. “Rumors of your doings have reached your old school, Tom. I should be sorry to believe half of them.”

  Voldemort’s expression remained impassive as he said, “Greatness inspires envy, envy engenders spite, spite spawns lies. You must know this, Dumbledore.”

  “You call it ‘greatness,’ what you have been doing, do you?” asked Dumbledore delicately.

  “Certainly,” said Voldemort, and his eyes seemed to burn red. “I have experimented; I have pushed the boundaries of magic further, perhaps, than they have ever been pushed—”

  “Of some kinds of magic,” Dumbledore corrected him quietly. “Of some. Of others, you remain… forgive me… woefully ignorant.”

  For the first time, Voldemort smiled. It was a taut leer, an evil thing, more threatening than a look of rage.

  “The old argument,” he said softly. “But nothing I have seen in the world has supported your famous pronouncements that love is more powerful than my kind of magic, Dumbledore.”

  “Perhaps you have been looking in the wrong places,” suggested Dumbledore.

  “Well, then, what better place to start my fresh researches than here, at Hogwarts?” said Voldemort. “Will you let me return? Will you let me share my knowledge with your students? I place myself and my talents at your disposal. I am yours to command.”

  Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. “And what will become of those whom you command? What will happen to those who call themselves—or so rumor has it—the Death Eaters?”

  Harry could tell that Voldemort had not expected Dumbledore to know this name; he saw Voldemort’s eyes flash red again and the slitlike nostrils flare.

  “My friends,” he said, after a moment’s pause, “will carry on without me, I am sure.”

  “I am glad to hear that you consider them friends,” said Dumbledore. “I was under the impression that they are more in the order of servants.”

  “You are mistaken,” said Voldemort.

  “Then if I were to go to the Hog’s Head tonight, I would not find a group of them—Nott, Rosier, Muldber, Dolohov—awaiting your return? Devoted friends indeed, to travel this far with you on a snowy night, merely to wish you luck as you attempted to secure a teaching post.”

  There could be no doubt that Dumbledore’s detailed knowledge of those with whom he was traveling was even less welcome to Voldemort; however, he rallied almost at once.

  “You are omniscient as ever, Dumbledore.”

  “Oh no, merely friendly with the local barmen,” said Dumbledore lightly. “Now, Tom…”

  Dumbledore set down his empty glass and drew himself up in his seat, the tips of his fingers together in a very characteristic gesture.

  “Let us speak openly. Why have you come here tonight, surrounded by henchmen, to request a job we both know you do not want?”

  Voldemort looked coldly surprised. “A job I do not want? On the contrary, Dumbledore, I want it very much.”

  “Oh, you want to come back to Hogwarts, but you do not want to teach any more than you wanted to when you were eighteen. What is it you’re after, Tom? Why not try an open request for once?”

  Voldemort sneered.

  “If you do not want to give me a job—”

  “Of course I don’t,” said Dumbledore. “And I don’t think for a moment you expected me to. Nevertheless, you came here, you asked, you must have had a purpose.”

  Voldemort stood up. He looked less like Tom Riddle than ever, his features thick with rage.

  “This is your final word?”

  “It is,” said Dumbledore, also standing.

  “Then we have nothing more to say to each other.”

  “No, nothing,” said Dumbledore, and a great sadness filled his face. “The time is long gone when I could frighten you with a burning wardrobe and force you to make repayment for your crimes. But I wish I could, Tom… I wish I could…”

  For a second, Harry was on the verge of shouting a pointless warning: He was sure that Voldemort’s hand had twitched toward his pocket and his wand; but then the moment had passed, Voldemort had turned away, the door was closing, and he was gone.

  Harry felt Dumbledore’s hand close over his arm again and moments later, they were standing together on almost the same spot, but there was no snow building on the window ledge, and Dumbledore’s hand was blackened and dead-looking once more.

  “Why?” said Harry at once, looking up into Dumbledore’s face. “Why did he come back? Did you ever find out?”

  “I have ideas,” said Dumbledore, “but no more than that.”

  “What ideas, sir?”

  “I shall tell you, Harry, when you have retrieved that memory from Professor Slughorn,” said Dumbledore. “When you have that last piece of the jigsaw, everything will, I hope, be clear… to both of us.”

  Harry was still burning with curiosity and even though Dumbledore had walked to the door and was holding it open for him, he did not move at once.

  “Was he after the Defense Against the Dark Arts job again, sir? He didn’t say…”

  “Oh, he definitely wanted the Defense Against the Dark Arts job,” said Dumbledore. “The aftermath of our little meeting proved that. You see, we have never been able to keep a De
fense Against the Dark Arts teacher for longer than a year since I refused the post to Lord Voldemort.”

  21. THE UNKNOWABLE ROOM

  Harry wracked his brains over the next week as to how he was to persuade Slughorn to hand over the true memory, but nothing in the nature of a brain wave occurred and he was reduced to doing what he did increasingly these days when at a loss: poring over his Potions book, hoping that the Prince would have scribbled something useful in a margin, as he had done so many times before.

  “You won’t find anything in there,” said Hermione firmly, late on Sunday evening.

  “Don’t start, Hermione,” said Harry. “If it hadn’t been for the Prince, Ron wouldn’t be sitting here now.”

  “He would if you’d just listened to Snape in our first year,” said Hermione dismissively.

  Harry ignored her. He had just found an incantation (Sectumsempra!) scrawled in a margin above the intriguing words “For enemies,” and was itching to try it out, but thought it best not to in front of Hermione. Instead, he surreptitiously folded down the corner of the page.

  They were sitting beside the fire in the common room; the only other people awake were fellow sixth years. There had been a certain amount of excitement earlier when they had come back from dinner to find a new sign on the notice board that announced the date for their Apparition Test. Those who would be seventeen on or before the first test date, the twenty-first of April, had the option of signing up for additional practice sessions, which would take place (heavily supervised) in Hogsmeade.

  Ron had panicked on reading this notice; he had still not managed to Apparate and feared he would not be ready for the test. Hermione, who had now achieved Apparition twice, was a little more confident, but Harry, who would not be seventeen for another four months, could not take the test whether ready or not.

  “At least you can Apparate, though!” said Ron tensely. “You’ll have no trouble come July!”

  “I’ve only done it once,” Harry reminded him; he had finally managed to disappear and rematerialize inside his hoop during their previous lesson.