The Half-Blood Prince Page 43

  ‘He is here,’ said a voice behind Harry. ‘Professor Dumbledore returned to the school an hour ago.’

  Nearly Headless Nick was gliding towards Harry, his head wobbling as usual upon his ruff.

  ‘I had it from the Bloody Baron, who saw him arrive,’ said Nick. ‘He appeared, according to the Baron, to be in good spirits, though a little tired, of course.’

  ‘Where is he?’ said Harry, his heart leaping.

  ‘Oh, groaning and clanking up on the Astronomy Tower, it’s a favourite pastime of his –’

  ‘Not the Bloody Baron, Dumbledore!’

  ‘Oh – in his office,’ said Nick. ‘I believe, from what the Baron said, that he had business to attend to before turning in –’

  ‘Yeah, he has,’ said Harry, excitement blazing in his chest at the prospect of telling Dumbledore he had secured the memory. He wheeled about and sprinted off again, ignoring the Fat Lady who was calling after him.

  ‘Come back! All right, I lied! I was annoyed you woke me up! The password’s still “tapeworm”!’

  But Harry was already hurtling back along the corridor, and, within minutes, he was saying ‘toffee eclairs’ to Dumbledore’s gargoyle, which leapt aside, permitting Harry entrance on to the spiral staircase.

  ‘Enter,’ said Dumbledore when Harry knocked. He sounded exhausted.

  Harry pushed open the door. There was Dumbledore’s office, looking the same as ever, but with black, star-strewn skies beyond the windows.

  ‘Good gracious, Harry,’ said Dumbledore in surprise. ‘To what do I owe this very late pleasure?’

  ‘Sir – I’ve got it. I’ve got the memory from Slughorn.’

  Harry pulled out the tiny glass bottle and showed it to Dumbledore. For a moment or two, the Headmaster looked stunned. Then his face split in a wide smile.

  ‘Harry, this is spectacular news! Very well done indeed! I knew you could do it!’

  All thought of the lateness of the hour apparently forgotten, he hurried around his desk, took the bottle with Slughorn’s memory in his uninjured hand and strode over to the cabinet where he kept the Pensieve.

  ‘And now,’ said Dumbledore, placing the stone basin upon his desk and emptying the contents of the bottle into it, ‘now, at last, we shall see. Harry, quickly …’

  Harry bowed obediently over the Pensieve and felt his feet leave the office floor … once again he fell through darkness and landed in Horace Slughorn’s office many years before.

  There was the much younger Horace Slughorn, with his thick, shiny, straw-coloured hair and his gingery-blond moustache, sitting again in the comfortable winged armchair in his office, his feet resting upon a velvet pouffe, a small glass of wine in one hand, the other rummaging in a box of crystallised pineapple. And there were the half a dozen teenage boys sitting around Slughorn with Tom Riddle in the midst of them, Marvolo’s gold and black ring gleaming on his finger.

  Dumbledore landed beside Harry just as Riddle asked, ‘Sir, is it true that Professor Merrythought is retiring?’

  ‘Tom, Tom, if I knew I couldn’t tell you,’ said Slughorn, wagging his finger reprovingly at Riddle, though winking at the same time. ‘I must say, I’d like to know where you get your information, boy; more knowledgeable than half the staff, you are.’

  Riddle smiled; the other boys laughed and cast him admiring looks.

  ‘What with your uncanny ability to know things you shouldn’t, and your careful flattery of the people who matter – thank you for the pineapple, by the way, you’re quite right, it is my favourite –’

  Several of the boys tittered again.

  ‘– I confidently expect you to rise to Minister for Magic within twenty years. Fifteen, if you keep sending me pineapple. I have excellent contacts at the Ministry.’

  Tom Riddle merely smiled as the others laughed again. Harry noticed that he was by no means the eldest of the group of boys, but that they all seemed to look to him as their leader.

  ‘I don’t know that politics would suit me, sir,’ he said when the laughter had died away. ‘I don’t have the right kind of background, for one thing.’

  A couple of the boys around him smirked at each other. Harry was sure they were enjoying a private joke: undoubtedly about what they knew, or suspected, regarding their gang leader’s famous ancestor.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Slughorn briskly, ‘couldn’t be plainer you come from decent wizarding stock, abilities like yours. No, you’ll go far, Tom, I’ve never been wrong about a student yet.’

  The small golden clock standing upon Slughorn’s desk chimed eleven o’clock behind him and he looked round.

  ‘Good gracious, is it that time already? You’d better get going, boys, or we’ll all be in trouble. Lestrange, I want your essay by tomorrow or it’s detention. Same goes for you, Avery.’

  One by one the boys filed out of the room. Slughorn heaved himself out of his armchair and carried his empty glass over to his desk. A movement behind him made him look round; Riddle was still standing there.

  ‘Look sharp, Tom, you don’t want to be caught out of bed out of hours, and you a prefect …’

  ‘Sir, I wanted to ask you something.’

  ‘Ask away, then, m’boy, ask away …’

  ‘Sir, I wondered what you know about … about Horcruxes?’

  Slughorn stared at him, his thick fingers absent-mindedly caressing the stem of his wine glass.

  ‘Project for Defence Against the Dark Arts, is it?’

  But Harry could tell that Slughorn knew perfectly well that this was not schoolwork.

  ‘Not exactly, sir,’ said Riddle. ‘I came across the term while reading and I didn’t fully understand it.’

  ‘No … well … you’d be hard-pushed to find a book at Hogwarts that’ll give you details on Horcruxes, Tom. That’s very Dark stuff, very Dark indeed,’ said Slughorn.

  ‘But you obviously know all about them, sir? I mean, a wizard like you – sorry, I mean, if you can’t tell me, obviously – I just knew if anyone could tell me, you could – so I just thought I’d ask –’

  It was very well done, thought Harry, the hesitancy, the casual tone, the careful flattery, none of it overdone. He, Harry, had had too much experience of trying to wheedle information out of reluctant people not to recognise a master at work. He could tell that Riddle wanted the information very, very much; perhaps had been working towards this moment for weeks.

  ‘Well,’ said Slughorn, not looking at Riddle, but fiddling with the ribbon on top of his box of crystallised pineapple, ‘well, it can’t hurt to give you an overview, of course. Just so that you understand the term. A Horcrux is the word used for an object in which a person has concealed part of their soul.’

  ‘I don’t quite understand how that works, though, sir,’ said Riddle.

  His voice was carefully controlled, but Harry could sense his excitement.

  ‘Well, you split your soul, you see,’ said Slughorn, ‘and hide part of it in an object outside the body. Then, even if one’s body is attacked or destroyed, one cannot die, for part of the soul remains earthbound and undamaged. But, of course, existence in such a form …’

  Slughorn’s face crumpled and Harry found himself remembering words he had heard nearly two years before.

  ‘I was ripped from my body, I was less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost … but still, I was alive.’

  ‘… few would want it, Tom, very few. Death would be preferable.’

  But Riddle’s hunger was now apparent; his expression was greedy, he could no longer hide his longing.

  ‘How do you split your soul?’

  ‘Well,’ said Slughorn uncomfortably, ‘you must understand that the soul is supposed to remain intact and whole. Splitting it is an act of violation, it is against nature.’

  ‘But how do you do it?’

  ‘By an act of evil – the supreme act of evil. By committing murder. Killing rips the soul apart. The wizard intent upon creating a Horcrux would use the damage t
o his advantage: he would encase the torn portion –’

  ‘Encase? But how –?’

  ‘There is a spell, do not ask me, I don’t know!’ said Slughorn, shaking his head like an old elephant bothered by mosquitoes. ‘Do I look as though I have tried it – do I look like a killer?’

  ‘No, sir, of course not,’ said Riddle quickly. ‘I’m sorry … I didn’t mean to offend …’

  ‘Not at all, not at all, not offended,’ said Slughorn gruffly. ‘It’s natural to feel some curiosity about these things … wizards of a certain calibre have always been drawn to that aspect of magic …’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Riddle. ‘What I don’t understand, though – just out of curiosity – I mean, would one Horcrux be much use? Can you only split your soul once? Wouldn’t it be better, make you stronger, to have your soul in more pieces? I mean, for instance, isn’t seven the most powerfully magical number, wouldn’t seven –?’

  ‘Merlin’s beard, Tom!’ yelped Slughorn. ‘Seven! Isn’t it bad enough to think of killing one person? And in any case … bad enough to divide the soul … but to rip it into seven pieces …’

  Slughorn looked deeply troubled now: he was gazing at Riddle as though he had never seen him plainly before and Harry could tell that he was regretting entering into the conversation at all.

  ‘Of course,’ he muttered, ‘this is all hypothetical, what we’re discussing, isn’t it? All academic …’

  ‘Yes, sir, of course,’ said Riddle quickly.

  ‘But all the same, Tom … keep it quiet, what I’ve told – that’s to say, what we’ve discussed. People wouldn’t like to think we’ve been chatting about Horcruxes. It’s a banned subject at Hogwarts, you know … Dumbledore’s particularly fierce about it …’

  ‘I won’t say a word, sir,’ said Riddle and he left, but not before Harry had glimpsed his face, which was full of that same wild happiness it had worn when he had first found out that he was a wizard, the sort of happiness that did not enhance his handsome features, but made them, somehow, less human …

  ‘Thank you, Harry,’ said Dumbledore quietly. ‘Let us go …’

  When Harry landed back on the office floor, Dumbledore was already sitting down behind his desk. Harry sat too, and waited for Dumbledore to speak.

  ‘I have been hoping for this piece of evidence for a very long time,’ said Dumbledore at last. ‘It confirms the theory on which I have been working, it tells me that I am right, and also how very far there is still to go …’

  Harry suddenly noticed that every single one of the old headmasters and headmistresses in the portraits around the walls was awake and listening in on their conversation. A corpulent, red-nosed wizard had actually taken out an ear-trumpet.

  ‘Well, Harry,’ said Dumbledore, ‘I am sure you understood the significance of what we just heard. At the same age as you are now, give or take a few months, Tom Riddle was doing all he could to find out how to make himself immortal.’

  ‘You think he succeeded then, sir?’ asked Harry. ‘He made a Horcrux? And that’s why he didn’t die when he attacked me? He had a Horcrux hidden somewhere? A bit of his soul was safe?’

  ‘A bit … or more,’ said Dumbledore. ‘You heard Voldemort: what he particularly wanted from Horace was an opinion on what would happen to the wizard who created more than one Horcrux, what would happen to the wizard so determined to evade death that he would be prepared to murder many times, rip his soul repeatedly, so as to store it in many, separately concealed Horcruxes. No book would have given him that information. As far as I know – as far, I am sure, as Voldemort knew – no wizard had ever done more than tear his soul in two.’

  Dumbledore paused for a moment, marshalling his thoughts, and then said, ‘Four years ago, I received what I considered certain proof that Voldemort had split his soul.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Harry. ‘How?’

  ‘You handed it to me, Harry,’ said Dumbledore. ‘The diary, Riddle’s diary, the one giving instructions on how to reopen the Chamber of Secrets.’

  ‘I don’t understand, sir,’ said Harry. ‘Well, although I did not see the Riddle who came out of the diary, what you described to me was a phenomenon I had never witnessed. A mere memory starting to act and think for itself? A mere memory, sapping the life out of the girl into whose hands it had fallen? No, something much more sinister had lived inside that book … a fragment of soul, I was almost sure of it. The diary had been a Horcrux. But this raised as many questions as it answered. What intrigued and alarmed me most was that that diary had been intended as a weapon as much as a safeguard.’

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ said Harry.

  ‘Well, it worked as a Horcrux is supposed to work – in other words, the fragment of soul concealed inside it was kept safe and had undoubtedly played its part in preventing the death of its owner. But there could be no doubt that Riddle really wanted that diary read, wanted the piece of his soul to inhabit or possess somebody else, so that Slytherin’s monster would be unleashed again.’

  ‘Well, he didn’t want his hard work to be wasted,’ said Harry. ‘He wanted people to know he was Slytherin’s heir, because he couldn’t take credit at the time.’

  ‘Quite correct,’ said Dumbledore, nodding. ‘But don’t you see, Harry, that if he intended the diary to be passed to, or planted on, some future Hogwarts student, he was being remarkably blasé about that precious fragment of his soul concealed within it. The point of a Horcrux is, as Professor Slughorn explained, to keep part of the self hidden and safe, not to fling it into somebody else’s path and run the risk that they might destroy it – as indeed happened: that particular fragment of soul is no more; you saw to that.

  ‘The careless way in which Voldemort regarded this Horcrux seemed most ominous to me. It suggested that he must have made – or been planning to make – more Horcruxes, so that the loss of his first would not be so detrimental. I did not wish to believe it, but nothing else seemed to make sense.

  ‘Then you told me, two years later, that on the night that Voldemort returned to his body, he made a most illuminating and alarming statement to his Death Eaters. “I, who have gone further than anybody along the path that leads to immortality.” That was what you told me he said. “Further than anybody.” And I thought I knew what that meant, though the Death Eaters did not. He was referring to his Horcruxes, Horcruxes in the plural, Harry, which I do not believe any other wizard has ever had. Yet it fitted: Lord Voldemort had seemed to grow less human with the passing years, and the transformation he had undergone seemed to me to be only explicable if his soul was mutilated beyond the realms of what we might call usual evil …’

  ‘So he’s made himself impossible to kill by murdering other people?’ said Harry. ‘Why couldn’t he make a Philosopher’s Stone, or steal one, if he was so interested in immortality?’

  ‘Well, we know that he tried to do just that, five years ago,’ said Dumbledore. ‘But there are several reasons why, I think, a Philosopher’s Stone would appeal less than Horcruxes to Lord Voldemort.

  ‘While the Elixir of Life does indeed extend life, it must be drunk regularly, for all eternity, if the drinker is to maintain his immortality. Therefore, Voldemort would be entirely dependent on the Elixir, and if it ran out, or was contaminated, or if the Stone was stolen, he would die just like any other man. Voldemort likes to operate alone, remember. I believe that he would have found the thought of being dependent, even on the Elixir, intolerable. Of course he was prepared to drink it if it would take him out of the horrible part-life to which he was condemned after attacking you, but only to regain a body. Thereafter, I am convinced, he intended to continue to rely on his Horcruxes: he would need nothing more, if only he could regain a human form. He was already immortal, you see … or as close to immortal as any man can be.

  ‘But now, Harry, armed with this information, the crucial memory you have succeeded in procuring for us, we are closer to the secret of finishing Lord Voldemort than anyone has eve
r been before. You heard him, Harry: “Wouldn’t it be better, make you stronger, to have your soul in more pieces … isn’t seven the most powerfully magical number …” Isn’t seven the most powerfully magical number. Yes, I think the idea of a seven-part soul would greatly appeal to Lord Voldemort.’

  ‘He made seven Horcruxes?’ said Harry, horror-struck, while several of the portraits on the walls made similar noises of shock and outrage. ‘But they could be anywhere in the world – hidden – buried or invisible –’

  ‘I am glad to see you appreciate the magnitude of the problem,’ said Dumbledore calmly. ‘But firstly, no, Harry, not seven Horcruxes: six. The seventh part of his soul, however maimed, resides inside his regenerated body. That was the part of him that lived a spectral existence for so many years during his exile; without that, he has no self at all. That seventh piece of soul will be the last that anybody wishing to kill Voldemort must attack – the piece that lives in his body.’

  ‘But the six Horcruxes, then,’ said Harry, a little desperately, ‘how are we supposed to find them?’

  ‘You are forgetting … you have already destroyed one of them. And I have destroyed another.’

  ‘You have?’ said Harry eagerly.

  ‘Yes indeed,’ said Dumbledore, and he raised his blackened, burned-looking hand. ‘The ring, Harry. Marvolo’s ring. And a terrible curse there was upon it too. Had it not been – forgive me the lack of seemly modesty – for my own prodigious skill, and for Professor Snape’s timely action when I returned to Hogwarts, desperately injured, I might not have lived to tell the tale. However, a withered hand does not seem an unreasonable exchange for a seventh of Voldemort’s soul. The ring is no longer a Horcrux.’

  ‘But how did you find it?’

  ‘Well, as you now know, I have made it my business for many years to discover as much as I can about Voldemort’s past life. I have travelled widely, visiting those places he once knew. I stumbled across the ring hidden in the ruin of the Gaunts’ house. It seems that once Voldemort had succeeded in sealing a piece of his soul inside it, he did not want to wear it any more. He hid it, protected by many powerful enchantments, in the shack where his ancestors had once lived (Morfin having been carted off to Azkaban, of course), never guessing that I might one day take the trouble to visit the ruin, or that I might be keeping an eye open for traces of magical concealment.