The Half-Blood Prince

by J. K. Rowling

  ‘I knew I was different,’ he whispered to his own quivering fingers. ‘I knew I was special. Always, I knew there was something.’

  ‘Well, you were quite right,’ said Dumbledore, who was no longer smiling, but watching Riddle intently. ‘You are a wizard.’

  Riddle lifted his head. His face was transfigured: there was a wild happiness upon it, yet for some reason it did not make him better-looking; on the contrary, his finely carved features seemed somehow rougher, his expression almost bestial.

  ‘Are you a wizard too?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Prove it,’ said Riddle at once, in the same commanding tone he had used when he had said ‘tell the truth’.

  Dumbledore raised his eyebrows.

  ‘If, as I take it, you are accepting your place at Hogwarts –’

  ‘Of course I am!’

  ‘Then you will address me as “Professor” or “sir”.’

  Riddle’s expression hardened for the most fleeting moment before he said, in an unrecognisably polite voice, ‘I’m sorry, sir. I meant – please, Professor, could you show me –?’

  Harry was sure that Dumbledore was going to refuse, that he would tell Riddle there would be plenty of time for practical demonstrations at Hogwarts, that they were currently in a building full of Muggles, and must therefore be cautious. To his great surprise, however, Dumbledore drew his wand from an inside pocket of his suit jacket, pointed it at the shabby wardrobe in the corner and gave the wand a casual flick.

  The wardrobe burst into flames.

  Riddle jumped to his feet. Harry could hardly blame him for howling in shock and rage; all his worldly possessions must have been in there; but even as Riddle rounded on Dumbledore the flames vanished, leaving the wardrobe completely undamaged.

  Riddle stared from the wardrobe to Dumbledore, then, his expression greedy, he pointed at the wand.

  ‘Where can I get one of them?’

  ‘All in good time,’ said Dumbledore. ‘I think there is something trying to get out of your wardrobe.’

  And sure enough, a faint rattling could be heard from inside it. For the first time, Riddle looked frightened.

  ‘Open the door,’ said Dumbledore.

  Riddle hesitated, then crossed the room and threw open the wardrobe door. On the topmost shelf, above a rail of threadbare clothes, a small cardboard box was shaking and rattling as though there were several frantic mice trapped inside it.

  ‘Take it out,’ said Dumbledore.

  Riddle took down the quaking box. He looked unnerved.

  ‘Is there anything in that box that you ought not to have?’ asked Dumbledore.

  Riddle threw Dumbledore a long, clear, calculating look.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so, sir,’ he said finally, in an expressionless voice.

  ‘Open it,’ said Dumbledore.

  Riddle took off the lid and tipped the contents on to his bed without looking at them. Harry, who had expected something much more exciting, saw a mess of small, everyday objects; a yo-yo, a silver thimble and a tarnished mouth-organ among them. Once free of the box, they stopped quivering and lay quite still upon the thin blankets.

  ‘You will return them to their owners with your apologies,’ said Dumbledore calmly, putting his wand back into his jacket. ‘I shall know whether it has been done. And be warned: thieving is not tolerated at Hogwarts.’

  Riddle did not look remotely abashed; he was still staring coldly and appraisingly at Dumbledore. At last he said in a colourless voice, ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘At Hogwarts,’ Dumbledore went on, ‘we teach you not only to use magic, but to control it. You have – inadvertently, I am sure – been using your powers in a way that is neither taught nor tolerated at our school. You are not the first, nor will you be the last, to allow your magic to run away with you. But you should know that Hogwarts can expel students, and the Ministry of Magic – yes, there is a Ministry – will punish lawbreakers still more severely. All new wizards must accept that, in entering our world, they abide by our laws.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Riddle again.

  It was impossible to tell what he was thinking; his face remained quite blank as he put the little cache of stolen objects back into the cardboard box. When he had finished he turned to Dumbledore and said baldly, ‘I haven’t got any money.’

  ‘That is easily remedied,’ said Dumbledore, drawing a leather money-pouch from his pocket. ‘There is a fund at Hogwarts for those who require assistance to buy books and robes. You might have to buy some of your spellbooks and so on second-hand, but –’

  ‘Where do you buy spellbooks?’ interrupted Riddle, who had taken the heavy money-bag without thanking Dumbledore, and was now examining a fat gold Galleon.

  ‘In Diagon Alley,’ said Dumbledore. ‘I have your list of books and school equipment with me. I can help you find everything –’

  ‘You’re coming with me?’ asked Riddle, looking up.

  ‘Certainly, if you –’

  ‘I don’t need you,’ said Riddle. ‘I’m used to doing things for myself, I go round London on my own all the time. How do you get to this Diagon Alley – sir?’ he added, catching Dumbledore’s eye.

  Harry thought that Dumbledore would insist upon accompanying Riddle, but once again he was surprised. Dumbledore handed Riddle the envelope containing his list of equipment, and, after telling Riddle exactly how to get to the Leaky Cauldron from the orphanage, he said, ‘You will be able to see it, although Muggles around you – non-magical people, that is – will not. Ask for Tom the barman – easy enough to remember, as he shares your name –’

  Riddle gave an irritable twitch, as though trying to displace an irksome fly.

  ‘You dislike the name “Tom”?’

  ‘There are a lot of Toms,’ muttered Riddle. Then, as though he could not suppress the question, as though it burst from him in spite of himself, he asked, ‘Was my father a wizard? He was called Tom Riddle too, they’ve told me.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ said Dumbledore, his voice gentle.

  ‘My mother can’t have been magic, or she wouldn’t have died,’ said Riddle, more to himself than Dumbledore. ‘It must’ve been him. So – when I’ve got all my stuff – when do I come to this Hogwarts?’

  ‘All the details are on the second piece of parchment in your envelope,’ said Dumbledore. ‘You will leave from King’s Cross Station on the first of September. There is a train ticket in there, too.’

  Riddle nodded. Dumbledore got to his feet and held out his hand again. Taking it, Riddle said, ‘I can speak to snakes. I found out when we’ve been to the country on trips – they find me, they whisper to me. Is that normal for a wizard?’

  Harry could tell that he had withheld mention of this strangest power until that moment, determined to impress.

  ‘It is unusual,’ said Dumbledore, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘but not unheard of.’

  His tone was casual but his eyes moved curiously over Riddle’s face. They stood for a moment, man and boy, staring at each other. Then the handshake was broken; Dumbledore was at the door.

  ‘Goodbye, Tom. I shall see you at Hogwarts.’

  ‘I think that will do,’ said the white-haired Dumbledore at Harry’s side, and seconds later they were soaring weightlessly through darkness once more, before landing squarely in the present-day office.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Dumbledore, landing beside Harry.

  Harry obeyed, his mind still full of what he had just seen.

  ‘He believed it much quicker than I did – I mean, when you told him he was a wizard,’ said Harry. ‘I didn’t believe Hagrid at first, when he told me.’

  ‘Yes, Riddle was perfectly ready to believe that he was – to use his word – “special”,’ said Dumbledore.

  ‘Did you know – then?’ asked Harry.

  ‘Did I know that I had just met the most dangerous Dark wizard of all time?’ said Dumbledore. ‘No, I had no idea that he was to grow up to be wh
at he is. However, I was certainly intrigued by him. I returned to Hogwarts intending to keep an eye upon him, something I should have done in any case, given that he was alone and friendless, but which, already, I felt I ought to do for others’ sake as much as his.

  ‘His powers, as you heard, were surprisingly well-developed for such a young wizard and – most interestingly and ominously of all – he had already discovered that he had some measure of control over them, and begun to use them consciously. And as you saw, they were not the random experiments typical of young wizards: he was already using magic against other people, to frighten, to punish, to control. The little stories of the strangled rabbit and the young boy and girl he lured into a cave were most suggestive … I can make them hurt if I want to …’

  ‘And he was a Parselmouth,’ interjected Harry.

  ‘Yes, indeed; a rare ability, and one supposedly connected with the Dark Arts, although, as we know, there are Parselmouths among the great and the good too. In fact, his ability to speak to serpents did not make me nearly as uneasy as his obvious instincts for cruelty, secrecy and domination.

  ‘Time is making fools of us again,’ said Dumbledore, indicating the dark sky beyond the windows. ‘But before we part, I want to draw your attention to certain features of the scene we have just witnessed, for they have a great bearing on the matters we shall be discussing in future meetings.

  ‘Firstly, I hope you noticed Riddle’s reaction when I mentioned that another shared his first name, “Tom”?’

  Harry nodded.

  ‘There he showed his contempt for anything that tied him to other people, anything that made him ordinary. Even then, he wished to be different, separate, notorious. He shed his name, as you know, within a few short years of that conversation and created the mask of “Lord Voldemort” behind which he has been hidden for so long.

  ‘I trust that you also noticed that Tom Riddle was already highly self-sufficient, secretive and, apparently, friendless? He did not want help or companionship on his trip to Diagon Alley. He preferred to operate alone. The adult Voldemort is the same. You will hear many of his Death Eaters claiming that they are in his confidence, that they alone are close to him, even understand him. They are deluded. Lord Voldemort has never had a friend, nor do I believe that he has ever wanted one.

  ‘And lastly – I hope you are not too sleepy to pay attention to this, Harry – the young Tom Riddle liked to collect trophies. You saw the box of stolen articles he had hidden in his room. These were taken from victims of his bullying behaviour, souvenirs, if you will, of particularly unpleasant bits of magic. Bear in mind this magpie-like tendency, for this, particularly, will be important later.

  ‘And now, it really is time for bed.’

  Harry got to his feet. As he walked across the room, his eyes fell upon the little table on which Marvolo Gaunt’s ring had rested last time, but the ring was no longer there.

  ‘Yes, Harry?’ said Dumbledore, for Harry had come to a halt.

  ‘The ring’s gone,’ said Harry, looking around. ‘But I thought you might have the mouth-organ or something.’

  Dumbledore beamed at him, peering over the top of his half-moon spectacles.

  ‘Very astute, Harry, but the mouth-organ was only ever a mouth-organ.’

  And on that enigmatic note he waved to Harry, who understood himself to be dismissed.

  — CHAPTER FOURTEEN —

  Felix Felicis

  Harry had Herbology first thing the following morning. He had been unable to tell Ron and Hermione about his lesson with Dumbledore over breakfast for fear of being overheard, but he filled them in as they walked across the vegetable patch towards the greenhouses. The weekend’s brutal wind had died out at last; the weird mist had returned and it took them a little longer than usual to find the correct greenhouse.

  ‘Wow, scary thought, the boy You-Know-Who,’ said Ron quietly, as they took their places around one of the gnarled Snargaluff stumps that formed that term’s project, and began pulling on their protective gloves. ‘But I still don’t get why Dumbledore’s showing you all this. I mean, it’s really interesting and everything, but what’s the point?’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Harry, inserting a gum shield. ‘But he says it’s all important and it’ll help me survive.’

  ‘I think it’s fascinating,’ said Hermione earnestly. ‘It makes absolute sense to know as much about Voldemort as possible. How else will you find out his weaknesses?’

  ‘So how was Slughorn’s latest party?’ Harry asked her thickly through the gum shield.

  ‘Oh, it was quite fun, really,’ said Hermione, now putting on protective goggles. ‘I mean, he drones on about famous ex-pupils a bit, and he absolutely fawns on McLaggen because he’s so well-connected, but he gave us some really nice food and he introduced us to Gwenog Jones.’

  ‘Gwenog Jones?’ said Ron, his eyes widening under his own goggles. ‘The Gwenog Jones? Captain of the Holyhead Harpies?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Hermione. ‘Personally, I thought she was a bit full of herself, but –’

  ‘Quite enough chat over here!’ said Professor Sprout briskly, bustling over and looking stern. ‘You’re lagging behind, everybody else has started and Neville’s already got his first pod!’

  They looked round; sure enough, there sat Neville with a bloody lip and several nasty scratches along the side of his face, but clutching an unpleasantly pulsating green object about the size of a grapefruit.

  ‘OK, Professor, we’re starting now!’ said Ron, adding quietly, when she had turned away again, ‘Should’ve used Muffliato, Harry.’

  ‘No, we shouldn’t!’ said Hermione at once, looking, as she always did, intensely cross at the thought of the Half-Blood Prince and his spells. ‘Well, come on … we’d better get going …’

  She gave the other two an apprehensive look; they all took deep breaths and then dived at the gnarled stump between them.

  It sprang to life at once; long, prickly, bramble-like vines flew out of the top and whipped through the air. One tangled itself in Hermione’s hair and Ron beat it back with a pair of secateurs; Harry succeeded in trapping a couple of vines and knotting them together; a hole opened in the middle of all the tentacle-like branches; Hermione plunged her arm bravely into this hole, which closed like a trap around her elbow; Harry and Ron tugged and wrenched at the vines, forcing the hole to open again and Hermione snatched her arm free, clutching in her fingers a pod just like Neville’s. At once, the prickly vines shot back inside and the gnarled stump sat there looking like an innocently dead lump of wood.

  ‘You know, I don’t think I’ll be having any of these in my garden when I’ve got my own place,’ said Ron, pushing his goggles up on to his forehead and wiping sweat from his face.

  ‘Pass me a bowl,’ said Hermione, holding the pulsating pod at arm’s length; Harry handed one over and she dropped the pod into it with a look of disgust on her face.

  ‘Don’t be squeamish, squeeze it out, they’re best when they’re fresh!’ called Professor Sprout.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Hermione, continuing their interrupted conversation as though a lump of wood had not just attacked them, ‘Slughorn’s going to have a Christmas party, Harry, and there’s no way you’ll be able to wriggle out of this one because he actually asked me to check your free evenings, so he could be sure to have it on a night you can come.’

  Harry groaned. Ron, meanwhile, who was attempting to burst the pod in the bowl by putting both hands on it, standing up and squashing it as hard as he could, said angrily, ‘And this is another party just for Slughorn’s favourites, is it?’

  ‘Just for the Slug Club, yes,’ said Hermione.

  The pod flew out from under Ron’s fingers and hit the greenhouse glass, rebounding on to the back of Professor Sprout’s head and knocking off her old patched hat. Harry went to retrieve the pod; when he got back, Hermione was saying, ‘Look, I didn’t make up the name “Slug Club” –’

  ‘“Slug C
lub”,’ repeated Ron with a sneer worthy of Malfoy. ‘It’s pathetic. Well, I hope you enjoy your party. Why don’t you try getting off with McLaggen, then Slughorn can make you King and Queen Slug –’

  ‘We’re allowed to bring guests,’ said Hermione, who for some reason had turned a bright, boiling scarlet, ‘and I was going to ask you to come, but if you think it’s that stupid then I won’t bother!’

  Harry suddenly wished the pod had flown a little further, so that he need not have been sitting there with the pair of them. Unnoticed by either, he seized the bowl that contained the pod and began to try and open it by the noisiest and most energetic means he could think of; unfortunately, he could still hear every word of their conversation.

  ‘You were going to ask me?’ asked Ron, in a completely different voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hermione angrily. ‘But obviously if you’d rather I got off with McLaggen …’

  There was a pause while Harry continued to pound the resilient pod with a trowel.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ said Ron, in a very quiet voice.

  Harry missed the pod, hit the bowl and it shattered.

  ‘Reparo,’ he said hastily, poking the pieces with his wand, and the bowl sprang back together again. The crash, however, appeared to have awoken Ron and Hermione to Harry’s presence. Hermione looked flustered and immediately started fussing about for her copy of Flesh-Eating Trees of the World to find out the correct way to juice Snargaluff pods; Ron, on the other hand, looked sheepish but also rather pleased with himself.

  ‘Hand that over, Harry,’ said Hermione hurriedly, ‘it says we’re supposed to puncture them with something sharp …’

  Harry passed her the pod in the bowl, he and Ron both snapped their goggles back over their eyes and dived, once more, for the stump.

  It was not as though he was really surprised, thought Harry, as he wrestled with a thorny vine intent upon throttling him; he had had an inkling that this might happen sooner or later. But he was not sure how he felt about it … he and Cho were now too embarrassed to look at each other, let alone talk to each other; what if Ron and Hermione started going out together, then split up? Could their friendship survive it? Harry remembered the few weeks when they had not been talking to each other in the third year; he had not enjoyed trying to bridge the distance between them. And then, what if they didn’t split up? What if they became like Bill and Fleur, and it became excruciatingly embarrassing to be in their presence, so that he was shut out for good?