 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 what 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 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 I upon the little table on which Marvolo Gaunt's ring had rested last I 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 I you might have the mouth organ or something." Dumbledore beamed at him, peering over the top of his halfw 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 14: 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 over-heard, 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 qui-etly, as they took their places around one of the gnarled Snargaluff stumps that formed this terms 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 its 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 exploits 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 Hermi-one 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. "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 conver-sation 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. Meanwhile, Ron, 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 favorites, is it?" "Just for the Slug Club, yes," said Hermione. The pod flew out from under Ron's fingers and hit the green house glass, rebounding onto 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 Club,'"repeated Ron with a sneer worthy of Malfoy. "It's pathetic. Well, I hope you enjoy your party. Why don't you try hooking up 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 farther, so that he need not have been sitting here with the pair of them. Unno-ticed by either, he seized the bowl that contained the pod and be-gan 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 differ-ent voice. "Yes," said Hermione angrily. "But obviously if you'd rather 1 hooked up 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 shattered it. '"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 