“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 behavior, 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 toward 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 this 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 around; 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.
“Okay, 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, bramblelike 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 tentaclelike 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 onto his forehead and wiping sweat from his face.