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

  “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 ringers absentmindedly clawing the stem of his wine glass.

  “Project for Defense 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—”

  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 recognize a master at work. He could tell that Riddle wanted the information very, very much; perhaps had been working toward this moment for weeks.

  “Well,” said Slughorn, not looking at Riddle, but fiddling with the ribbon on top of his box of crystallized 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 commiting murder. Killing rips the soul apart. The wizard intent upon creating a Horcrux would use the damage to 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 is natural to feel some curiosity about these things… Wizards of a certain caliber 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, marshaling his thought, 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 blase 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 had 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 don’t believe any other wizard has ever had. Yet it fitted: Lord Voldemort has seemed to grow less human with the passing years, and the transformation he had undergone seemed to me to be only explainable 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 Sorcerer’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 Sorcerer’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 the immortality. Therefore, Voldemort would be entirely dependant 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 ever 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 mid 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, for many years I have made it my business to discover as much as I can about Voldemort’s past life. I have traveled widely, visiting those places he once knew. I stumbled across the ring hidden in the ruin of the Gaunt’s house. It seem that once Voldemort had succeeded in sealing a piece of his soul inside it, he did not want to wear it anymore. 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.

  “However, we should not congratulate ourselves too heartily. You destroyed the diary and I the ring, but if we are right in our theory of a seven-part soul, four Horcruxes remain.”

  “And they could be anything?” said Harry. “They could be oh, in tin cans or, I dunno, empty potion bottles…”

  “You are thinking of Portkeys, Harry, which must be ordinary objects, easy to overlook. But would Lord Voldemort use tin cans or old potion bottles to guard his own precious soul? You are forgetting what I have showed you. Lord Voldemort liked to collect trophies, and he preferred objects with a powerful magical history. His pride, his belief in his own superiority, his determination to carve for himself a startling place in magical history; these things suggest to me that Voldemort would have chosen his Horcrux with some care, favoring objects worthy of the honor.”

  “The diary wasn’t that special.”

  “The diary, as you have said yourself, was proof that he was the Heir of Slytherin. I am sure that Voldemort considered it of stupendous importance.”

  “So, the other Horcruxes?” said Harry. “Do you think you know what they are, sir?”

  “I can only guess,” said Dumbledore. “For the reasons I have already given, I believe that Lord Voldemort would prefer objects that, in themselves, have a certain grandeur. I have therefore trawled back through Voldemort’s past to see if I can find evidence that such artifacts have disappeared around him.”

  “The locket!” said Harry loudly, “Hufflepuff’s cup!”

  “Yes,” said Dumbledore, smiling, “I would be prepared to bet—perhaps not my other hand—but a couple of fingers, that they became Horcruxes three and four. The remaining two, assuming again that he created a total of six, are more of a problem, but I will hazard a guess that, having secured objects from Hufflepuff and Slytherin, he set out to track down objects owned by Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. Four objects from the four founders would, I am sure, have exerted a powerful pull over Voldemort’s imagination. I cannot answer for whether he ever managed to find anything of Ravenclaw’s. I am confident, however, that the only known relic of Gryffindor remains safe.”

  Dumbledore pointed his blackened fingers to the wall behind him, where a ruby-encrusted sword reposed within a glass case.

  “Do you think that’s why he really wanted to come back to Hogwarts, sir?” said Harry. “To try and find something from one of the other founders?”

  “My thoughts precisely,” said Dumbledore. “But unfortunately, that does not advance us much further, for he was turned away, or so I believe, without the chance to search the school. I am forced to conclude that he never fulfilled his ambition of collecting four founders’ objects. He definitely had two—he may have f
ound three—that is the best we can do for now.”

  “Even if he got something of Ravenclaw’s or of Gryffindor’s, that leaves a sixth Horcrux,” said Harry, counting on his fingers. “Unless he’s got both?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Dumbledore. “I think I know what the sixth Horcrux is. I wonder what you will say when I confess that I have been curious for a while about the behavior of the snake, Nagini?’

  “The snake?” said Harry, startled. “You can use animals as Horcruxes?”

  “Well, it is inadvisable to do so,” said Dumbledore, “because to confide a part of your soul to something that can think and move for itself is obviously a very risky business. However, if my calculations are correct, Voldemort was still at least one Horcrux short of his goal of six when he entered your parents’ house with the intention of killing you.

  “He seems to have reserved the process of making Horcruxes for particularly significant deaths. You would certainly have been that. He believed that in killing you, he was destroying the danger the prophecy had outlined. He believed he was making himself invincible. I am sure that he was intending to make his final Horcrux with your death. As we know, he failed. After an interval of some years, however, he used Nagini to kill an old Muggle man, and it might then have occurred to him to turn her into his last Horcrux. She underlines the Slytherin connection, which enhances Lord Voldemort’s mystique; I think he is perhaps as fond of her as he can be of anything; he certainly likes to keep her close, and he seems to have an unusual amount of control over her, even for a Parselmouth.”

  “So,” said Harry, “the diary’s gone, the ring’s gone. The cup, the locket, and the snake are still intact, and you think there might be a Horcrux that was once Ravenclaw’s or Gryffindor’s?”

  “An admirably succinct and accurate summary, yes,” said Dumbledore, bowing his head.

  “So… are you still looking for them, sir? Is that where you’ve been going when you’ve been leaving the school?”