Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“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 Defense 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.

Having wasted a lot of time worrying aloud about Apparition, Ron was now struggling to finish a viciously difficult essay for Snape that Harry and Hermione had already completed. Harry fully expected to receive low marks on his, because he had disagreed with Snape on the best way to tackle dementors, but he did not care: Slughorn’s memory was the most important thing to him now.

“I’m telling you, the stupid Prince isn’t going to be able to help you with this, Harry!” said Hermione, more loudly. “There’s only one way to force someone to do what you want, and that’s the Imperius Curse, which is illegal—”

“Yeah, I know that, thanks,” said Harry, not looking up from the book. “That’s why I’m looking for something different. Dumbledore says Veritaserum won’t do it, but there might be something else, a potion or a spell…”