Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Chapters 25–30

The fact that Harry Potter was going out with Ginny Weasley seemed to interest a great number of people, most of them girls, yet Harry found himself newly and happily impervious to gossip over the next few weeks.

He had not dared to return to the Room of Requirement to retrieve his book, and his performance in Potions was suffering accordingly (though Slughorn, who approved of Ginny, had jocularly attributed this to Harry being lovesick).

She was not pretty; she looked simultaneously cross and sullen, with heavy brows and a long, pallid face.

“Professor, were you trying to get into the Room of Requirement?”
“...omens I have been vouchsafed — what?” She looked suddenly shifty.
“The Room of Requirement,” repeated Harry. “Were you trying to get in there?”

“The headmaster has intimated that he would prefer fewer visits from me,” she said coldly.

Perhaps the horse has heard people say that I have not inherited my great-great-grandmother’s gift. Those rumors have been bandied about by the jealous for years.

Yes, there was a commotion outside the door and it flew open, and there was that rather uncouth barman standing with Snape, who was waffling about having come the wrong way up the stairs...

"...Dumbledore seemed much more disposed to give me a job, and I could not help thinking, Harry, that it was because he appreciated the stark contrast between my own unassuming manners and quiet talent, compared to the pushing, thrusting young man who was prepared to listen at keyholes..."

She looked alarmed as he ran past her, around the corner into Dumbledore’s corridor, where the lone gargoyle stood sentry.

Harry let out a yell of mirthless laughter.

It was a treacherous descent and Dumbledore, hampered slightly by his withered hand, moved slowly.

Harry saw a fissure in the cliff into which dark water was swirling.

Harry found the place and the silence oppressive, unnerving.

“I do not think you will count, Harry: You are underage and unqualified. Voldemort would never have expected a sixteen-year-old to reach this place: I think it unlikely that your powers will register compared to mine.”

There was no sound other than the silken rustle of the boat’s prow cleaving the water; it moved without their help, as though an invisible rope was pulling it onward toward the light in the center.

He turned his head to look at the greenish glow toward which the boat was still inexorably sailing.

The basin was full of an emerald liquid emitting that phosphorescent glow.

“Undoubtedly,” he said, finally, “this potion must act in a way that will prevent me taking the Horcrux. It might paralyze me, cause me to forget what I am here for, create so much pain I am distracted, or render me incapable in some other way. This being the case, Harry, it will be your job to make sure I keep drinking, even if you have to tip the potion into my protesting mouth. You understand?”

“No!” shouted Harry, who had stood to refill the goblet again; instead he dropped the cup into the basin, flung himself down beside Dumbledore, and heaved him over onto his back; Dumbledore’s glasses were askew, his mouth agape, his eyes closed.

They crossed the outer cave, and Harry helped Dumbledore back into the icy seawater that filled the crevice in the cliff.

As they sped toward the castle, Harry glanced sideways at Dumbledore, ready to grab him should he fall, but the sight of the Dark Mark seemed to have acted upon Dumbledore like a stimulant: He was bent low over his broom, his eyes fixed upon the Mark, his long silver hair and beard flying behind him on the night air.

Dumbledore had already crossed the crenellated ramparts and was dismounting; Harry landed next to him seconds later and looked around.

“It has been in it!” said Malfoy vehemently. “I’ve been working on it all year, and tonight—”

Montague told me that when he was stuck in the Hogwarts one, he was trapped in limbo but sometimes he could hear what was going on at school, and sometimes what was going on in the shop, as if the cabinet was traveling between them, but he couldn’t make anyone hear him…

“Very gratifying,” said Dumbledore mildly. “We all like appreciation for our own hard work, of course..."

But suddenly footsteps were thundering up the stairs, and a second later Malfoy was buffeted out of the way as four people in black robes burst through the door onto the ramparts.

The dimly lit corridor was full of dust; half the ceiling seemed to have fallen in; and a battle was raging before him, but even as he attempted to make out who was fighting whom, he heard the hated voice shout, “It’s over, time to go!” and saw Snape disappearing around the corner at the far end of the corridor; he and Malfoy seemed to have forced their way through the fight unscathed.

As Harry plunged after them, one of the fighters detached themselves from the fray and flew at him: It was the werewolf, Fenrir.

But Snape parried the curse, knocking Harry backward off his feet before he could complete it; Harry rolled over and scrambled back up again as the huge Death Eater behind him yelled, “Incendio!”

Harry uttered an inarticulate yell of rage: In that instant, he cared not whether he lived or died.

Snape’s pale face, illuminated by the flaming cabin, was suffused with hatred just as it had been before he had cursed Dumbledore.

Fear stirred in Harry’s chest again: He had forgotten the inert figures he had left behind.

“He always hinted that he had an ironclad reason for trusting Snape,” muttered Professor McGonagall, now dabbing at the corners of her leaking eyes with a tartan-edged handkerchief.

“I mean...with Snape’s history...of course people were bound to wonder...but Dumbledore told me explicitly that Snape’s repentance was absolutely genuine...Wouldn’t hear a word against him!”

“So when he arrived at the fight, he joined in on the Death Eaters’ side?” asked Harry, who wanted every detail of Snape’s duplicity and infamy, feverishly collecting more reasons to hate him, to swear vengeance.

“So when he arrived at the fight, he joined in on the Death Eaters’ side?” asked Harry, who wanted every detail of Snape’s duplicity and infamy, feverishly collecting more reasons to hate him, to swear vengeance.

“Rosmerta?” said Professor McGonagall incredulously, but before she could go on, there was a knock on the door behind them and Professors Sprout, Flitwick, and Slughorn traipsed into the room, followed by Hagrid, who was still weeping copiously, his huge frame trembling with grief.

“I suppose...yes..." said Slughorn in a rather agitated voice, while Hagrid let out a strangled sob of assent.

This mantra seemed to pulse through Harry’s mind as he fell asleep at night, and his dreams were thick with cups, lockets, and mysterious objects that he could not quite reach, though Dumbledore helpfully offered Harry a rope ladder that turned to snakes the moment he began to climb...

Ron gave no sign that he was aware of Percy, apart from stabbing pieces of kipper with unwonted venom.

His animosity was all for Snape, but he had not forgotten the fear in Malfoy’s voice on that tower top, nor the fact that he had lowered his wand before the other Death Eaters arrived.

The castle ghosts were there too, barely visible in the bright sunlight, discernible only when they moved, shimmering insubstantially on the gleaming air.

At the sight of the centaur Firenze, who was standing like a sentinel near the water’s edge, she gave a start and scurried hastily into a seat a good distance away.

It was important, Dumbledore said, to fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then could evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated...

Scrimgeour hesitated, then said, in what was evidently supposed to be a tone of delicacy, “The Ministry can offer you all sorts of protection, you know, Harry. I would be delighted to place a couple of my Aurors at your service—”