The Half-Blood Prince Read online

  ‘Ah, good evening, Harry,’ said Dumbledore, looking up at him through his half-moon glasses with a most satisfied expression. ‘Excellent, excellent.’

  These words seemed to rouse Uncle Vernon. It was clear that as far as he was concerned, any man who could look at Harry and say ‘excellent’ was a man with whom he could never see eye to eye.

  ‘I don’t mean to be rude –’ he began, in a tone that threatened rudeness in every syllable.

  ‘– yet, sadly, accidental rudeness occurs alarmingly often,’ Dumbledore finished the sentence gravely. ‘Best to say nothing at all, my dear man. Ah, and this must be Petunia.’

  The kitchen door had opened, and there stood Harry’s aunt, wearing rubber gloves and a housecoat over her nightdress, clearly halfway through her usual pre-bedtime wipe-down of all the kitchen surfaces. Her rather horsy face registered nothing but shock.

  ‘Albus Dumbledore,’ said Dumbledore, when Uncle Vernon failed to effect an introduction. ‘We have corresponded, of course.’ Harry thought this an odd way of reminding Aunt Petunia that he had once sent her an exploding letter, but Aunt Petunia did not challenge the term. ‘And this must be your son Dudley?’

  Dudley had that moment peered round the living-room door. His large, blond head rising out of the stripy collar of his pyjamas looked oddly disembodied, his mouth gaping in astonishment and fear. Dumbledore waited a moment or two, apparently to see whether any of the Dursleys were going to say anything, but as the silence stretched on he smiled.

  ‘Shall we assume that you have invited me into your sitting room?’

  Dudley scrambled out of the way as Dumbledore passed him. Harry, still clutching the telescope and trainers, jumped the last few stairs and followed Dumbledore, who had settled himself in the armchair nearest the fire and was taking in the surroundings with an expression of benign interest. He looked quite extraordinarily out of place.

  ‘Aren’t – aren’t we leaving, sir?’ Harry asked anxiously.

  ‘Yes, indeed we are, but there are a few matters we need to discuss first,’ said Dumbledore. ‘And I would prefer not to do so in the open. We shall trespass upon your aunt and uncle’s hospitality only a little longer.’

  ‘You will, will you?’

  Vernon Dursley had entered the room, Petunia at his shoulder and Dudley skulking behind them both.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dumbledore simply, ‘I shall.’

  He drew his wand so rapidly that Harry barely saw it; with a casual flick, the sofa zoomed forwards and knocked the knees out from under all three of the Dursleys so that they collapsed upon it in a heap. Another flick of the wand and the sofa zoomed back to its original position.

  ‘We may as well be comfortable,’ said Dumbledore pleasantly.

  As he replaced his wand in his pocket, Harry saw that his hand was blackened and shrivelled; it looked as though his flesh had been burned away.

  ‘Sir – what happened to your –?’

  ‘Later, Harry,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Please sit down.’

  Harry took the remaining armchair, choosing not to look at the Dursleys, who seemed stunned into silence.

  ‘I would assume that you were going to offer me refreshment,’ Dumbledore said to Uncle Vernon, ‘but the evidence so far suggests that that would be optimistic to the point of foolishness.’

  A third twitch of the wand and a dusty bottle and five glasses appeared in midair. The bottle tipped and poured a generous measure of honey-coloured liquid into each of the glasses, which then floated to each person in the room.

  ‘Madam Rosmerta’s finest, oak-matured mead,’ said Dumbledore, raising his glass to Harry, who caught hold of his own and sipped. He had never tasted anything like it before, but enjoyed it immensely. The Dursleys, after quick, scared looks at each other, tried to ignore their glasses completely, a difficult feat, as they were nudging them gently on the sides of their heads. Harry could not suppress a suspicion that Dumbledore was rather enjoying himself.

  ‘Well, Harry,’ said Dumbledore, turning towards him, ‘a difficulty has arisen which I hope you will be able to solve for us. By us, I mean the Order of the Phoenix. But first of all I must tell you that Sirius’s will was discovered a week ago and that he left you everything he owned.’

  Over on the sofa, Uncle Vernon’s head turned, but Harry did not look at him, nor could he think of anything to say except, ‘Oh. Right.’

  ‘This is, in the main, fairly straightforward,’ Dumbledore went on. ‘You add a reasonable amount of gold to your account at Gringotts and you inherit all of Sirius’s personal possessions. The slightly problematic part of the legacy –’

  ‘His godfather’s dead?’ said Uncle Vernon loudly from the sofa. Dumbledore and Harry both turned to look at him. The glass of mead was now knocking quite insistently on the side of Vernon’s head; he attempted to beat it away. ‘He’s dead? His godfather?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dumbledore. He did not ask Harry why he had not confided in the Dursleys. ‘Our problem,’ he continued to Harry, as if there had been no interruption, ‘is that Sirius also left you number twelve, Grimmauld Place.’

  ‘He’s been left a house?’ said Uncle Vernon greedily, his small eyes narrowing, but nobody answered him.

  ‘You can keep using it as Headquarters,’ said Harry. ‘I don’t care. You can have it, I don’t really want it.’ Harry never wanted to set foot in number twelve, Grimmauld Place again if he could help it. He thought he would be haunted for ever by the memory of Sirius prowling its dark musty rooms alone, imprisoned within the place he had wanted so desperately to leave.

  ‘That is generous,’ said Dumbledore. ‘We have, however, vacated the building temporarily.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well,’ said Dumbledore, ignoring the mutterings of Uncle Vernon, who was now being rapped smartly over the head by the persistent glass of mead, ‘Black family tradition decreed that the house was handed down the direct line, to the next male with the name of Black. Sirius was the very last of the line as his younger brother, Regulus, predeceased him and both were childless. While his will makes it perfectly plain that he wants you to have the house, it is nevertheless possible that some spell or enchantment has been set upon the place to ensure that it cannot be owned by anyone other than a pure-blood.’

  A vivid image of the shrieking, spitting portrait of Sirius’s mother that hung in the hall of number twelve, Grimmauld Place flashed into Harry’s mind. ‘I bet there has,’ he said.

  ‘Quite,’ said Dumbledore. ‘And if such an enchantment exists, then the ownership of the house is most likely to pass to the eldest of Sirius’s living relatives, which would mean his cousin, Bellatrix Lestrange.’

  Without realising what he was doing, Harry sprang to his feet; the telescope and trainers in his lap rolled across the floor. Bellatrix Lestrange, Sirius’s killer, inherit his house?

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Well, obviously we would prefer that she didn’t get it, either,’ said Dumbledore calmly. ‘The situation is fraught with complications. We do not know whether the enchantments we ourselves have placed upon it, for example, making it unplottable, will hold now that ownership has passed from Sirius’s hands. It might be that Bellatrix will arrive on the doorstep at any moment. Naturally we had to move out until such time as we have clarified the position.’

  ‘But how are you going to find out if I’m allowed to own it?’

  ‘Fortunately,’ said Dumbledore, ‘there is a simple test.’

  He placed his empty glass on a small table beside his chair, but before he could do anything else, Uncle Vernon shouted, ‘Will you get these ruddy things off us?’

  Harry looked round; all three of the Dursleys were cowering with their arms over their heads as their glasses bounced up and down on their skulls, the contents flying everywhere.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ said Dumbledore politely, and he raised his wand again. All three glasses vanished. ‘But it would have been better manners to drink it, you kn
ow.’

  It looked as though Uncle Vernon was bursting with any number of unpleasant retorts, but he merely shrank back into the cushions with Aunt Petunia and Dudley and said nothing, keeping his small piggy eyes on Dumbledore’s wand.

  ‘You see,’ Dumbledore said, turning back to Harry and again speaking as though Uncle Vernon had not uttered, ‘if you have indeed inherited the house, you have also inherited –’

  He flicked his wand for a fifth time. There was a loud crack and a house-elf appeared, with a snout for a nose, giant bat’s ears and enormous bloodshot eyes, crouching on the Dursleys’ shagpile carpet and covered in grimy rags. Aunt Petunia let out a hair-raising shriek: nothing this filthy had entered her house in living memory; Dudley drew his large bare pink feet off the floor and sat with them raised almost above his head, as though he thought the creature might run up his pyjama trousers, and Uncle Vernon bellowed, ‘What the hell is that?’

  ‘Kreacher,’ finished Dumbledore.

  ‘Kreacher won’t, Kreacher won’t, Kreacher won’t!’ croaked the house-elf, quite as loudly as Uncle Vernon, stamping his long gnarled feet and pulling his ears. ‘Kreacher belongs to Miss Bellatrix, oh, yes, Kreacher belongs to the Blacks, Kreacher wants his new mistress, Kreacher won’t go to the Potter brat, Kreacher won’t, won’t, won’t –’

  ‘As you can see, Harry,’ said Dumbledore loudly, over Kreacher’s continued croaks of ‘won’t, won’t, won’t’, ‘Kreacher is showing a certain reluctance to pass into your ownership.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ said Harry again, looking with disgust at the writhing, stamping house-elf. ‘I don’t want him.’

  ‘Won’t, won’t, won’t, won’t –’

  ‘You would prefer him to pass into the ownership of Bellatrix Lestrange? Bearing in mind that he has lived at the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix for the past year?’

  ‘Won’t, won’t, won’t, won’t –’

  Harry stared at Dumbledore. He knew that Kreacher could not be permitted to go and live with Bellatrix Lestrange, but the idea of owning him, of having responsibility for the creature that had betrayed Sirius, was repugnant.

  ‘Give him an order,’ said Dumbledore. ‘If he has passed into your ownership, he will have to obey. If not, then we shall have to think of some other means of keeping him from his rightful mistress.’

  ‘Won’t, won’t, won’t, WON’T!’

  Kreacher’s voice had risen to a scream. Harry could think of nothing to say, except, ‘Kreacher, shut up!’

  It looked for a moment as though Kreacher was going to choke. He grabbed his throat, his mouth still working furiously, his eyes bulging. After a few seconds of frantic gulping, he threw himself face forwards on to the carpet (Aunt Petunia whimpered) and beat the floor with his hands and feet, giving himself over to a violent, but entirely silent, tantrum.

  ‘Well, that simplifies matters,’ said Dumbledore cheerfully. ‘It seems that Sirius knew what he was doing. You are the rightful owner of number twelve, Grimmauld Place, and of Kreacher.’

  ‘Do I – do I have to keep him with me?’ Harry asked, aghast, as Kreacher thrashed around at his feet.

  ‘Not if you don’t want to,’ said Dumbledore. ‘If I might make a suggestion, you could send him to Hogwarts to work in the kitchen there. In that way, the other house-elves could keep an eye on him.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Harry in relief, ‘yeah, I’ll do that. Er – Kreacher – I want you to go to Hogwarts and work in the kitchens there with the other house-elves.’

  Kreacher, who was now lying flat on his back with his arms and legs in the air, gave Harry one upside-down look of deepest loathing and, with another loud crack, vanished.

  ‘Good,’ said Dumbledore. ‘There is also the matter of the Hippogriff, Buckbeak. Hagrid has been looking after him since Sirius died, but Buckbeak is yours now, so if you would prefer to make different arrangements –’

  ‘No,’ said Harry at once, ‘he can stay with Hagrid. I think Buckbeak would prefer that.’

  ‘Hagrid will be delighted,’ said Dumbledore, smiling. ‘He was thrilled to see Buckbeak again. Incidentally, we have decided, in the interests of Buckbeak’s safety, to rechristen him Witherwings for the time being, though I doubt that the Ministry would ever guess he is the Hippogriff they once sentenced to death. Now, Harry, is your trunk packed?’

  ‘Erm …’

  ‘Doubtful that I would turn up?’ Dumbledore suggested shrewdly.

  ‘I’ll just go and – er – finish off,’ said Harry hastily, hurrying to pick up his fallen telescope and trainers.

  It took him a little over ten minutes to track down everything he needed; at last he had managed to extract his Invisibility Cloak from under the bed, screwed the top back on his jar of Colour-Change Ink and forced the lid of his trunk shut on his cauldron. Then, heaving his trunk in one hand and holding Hedwig’s cage in the other, he made his way back downstairs.

  He was disappointed to discover that Dumbledore was not waiting in the hall, which meant that he had to return to the living room.

  Nobody was talking. Dumbledore was humming quietly, apparently quite at his ease, but the atmosphere was thicker than cold custard and Harry did not dare look at the Dursleys as he said, ‘Professor – I’m ready now.’

  ‘Good,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Just one last thing, then.’ And he turned to speak to the Dursleys once more. ‘As you will no doubt be aware, Harry comes of age in a year’s time –’

  ‘No,’ said Aunt Petunia, speaking for the first time since Dumbledore’s arrival.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ said Dumbledore politely.

  ‘No, he doesn’t. He’s a month younger than Dudley, and Dudders doesn’t turn eighteen until the year after next.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Dumbledore pleasantly, ‘but in the wizarding world, we come of age at seventeen.’

  Uncle Vernon muttered ‘preposterous’, but Dumbledore ignored him.

  ‘Now, as you already know, the wizard called Lord Voldemort has returned to this country. The wizarding community is currently in a state of open warfare. Harry, whom Lord Voldemort has already attempted to kill on a number of occasions, is in even greater danger now than the day when I left him upon your doorstep fifteen years ago, with a letter explaining about his parents’ murder and expressing the hope that you would care for him as though he were your own.’

  Dumbledore paused, and although his voice remained light and calm, and he gave no obvious sign of anger, Harry felt a kind of chill emanating from him and noticed that the Dursleys drew very slightly closer together.

  ‘You did not do as I asked. You have never treated Harry as a son. He has known nothing but neglect and often cruelty at your hands. The best that can be said is that he has at least escaped the appalling damage you have inflicted upon the unfortunate boy sitting between you.’

  Both Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon looked around instinctively, as though expecting to see someone other than Dudley squeezed between them.

  ‘Us – mistreat Dudders? What d’you –?’ began Uncle Vernon furiously, but Dumbledore raised his finger for silence, a silence which fell as though he had struck Uncle Vernon dumb.

  ‘The magic I evoked fifteen years ago means that Harry has powerful protection while he can still call this house home. However miserable he has been here, however unwelcome, however badly treated, you have at least, grudgingly, allowed him houseroom. This magic will cease to operate the moment that Harry turns seventeen; in other words, the moment he becomes a man. I ask only this: that you allow Harry to return, once more, to this house, before his seventeenth birthday, which will ensure that the protection continues until that time.’

  None of the Dursleys said anything. Dudley was frowning slightly, as though he was still trying to work out when he had ever been mistreated. Uncle Vernon looked as though he had something stuck in his throat; Aunt Petunia, however, was oddly flushed.

  ‘Well, Harry … time for us to be off,’ said Dumbledore at last, standing
up and straightening his long black cloak. ‘Until we meet again,’ he said to the Dursleys, who looked as though that moment could wait for ever as far as they were concerned, and after doffing his hat, he swept from the room.

  ‘Bye,’ said Harry hastily to the Dursleys, and followed Dumbledore, who paused beside Harry’s trunk, upon which Hedwig’s cage was perched.

  ‘We do not want to be encumbered by these just now,’ he said, pulling out his wand again. ‘I shall send them to The Burrow to await us there. However, I would like you to bring your Invisibility Cloak … just in case.’

  Harry extracted his Cloak from his trunk with some difficulty, trying not to show Dumbledore the mess within. When he had stuffed it into an inside pocket of his jacket, Dumbledore waved his wand and the trunk, cage and Hedwig vanished. Dumbledore then waved his wand again and the front door opened on to cool, misty darkness.

  ‘And now, Harry, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.’

  — CHAPTER FOUR —

  Horace Slughorn

  Despite the fact that he had spent every waking moment of the past few days hoping desperately that Dumbledore would indeed come to fetch him, Harry felt distinctly awkward as they set off down Privet Drive together. He had never had a proper conversation with his headmaster outside Hogwarts before; there was usually a desk between them. The memory of their last face-to-face encounter kept intruding, too, and it rather heightened Harry’s sense of embarrassment; he had shouted a lot on that occasion, not to mention doing his best to smash several of Dumbledore’s most prized possessions.

  Dumbledore, however, seemed completely relaxed.

  ‘Keep your wand at the ready, Harry,’ he said brightly.

  ‘But I thought I’m not allowed to use magic outside school, sir?’

  ‘If there is an attack,’ said Dumbledore, ‘I give you permission to use any counter-jinx or -curse that might occur to you. However, I do not think you need worry about being attacked tonight.’