Harry Potter 06 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

down the table, the firelight glinting strangely in his red eyes. ‘ Will the Ministry have fallen by next Saturday?’
    Once again, all heads turned. Yaxley squared his shoulders.
    ‘My Lord, I have good news on that score. I have – with difficulty, and after great effort – succeeded in placing an Imperius Curse upon Pius Thicknesse.’
    Many of those sitting around Yaxley looked impressed; his neighbour, Dolohov, a man with a long, twisted face, clapped him on the back.
    ‘It is a start,’ said Voldemort. ‘But Thicknesse is only one man. Scrimgeour must be surrounded by our people before I act. One failed attempt on the Minister’s life will set me back a long way.’
    ‘Yes – my Lord, that is true – but you know, as Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Thicknesse has regular contact not only with the Minister himself, but also with the Heads of all the other Ministry departments. It will, I think, be easy, now that we have such a high-ranking official under our control, to subjugate the others, and then they can all work together to bring Scrimgeour down.’
    ‘As long as our friend Thicknesse is not discovered before he has converted the rest,’ said Voldemort. ‘At any rate, it remains unlikely that the Ministry will be mine before next Saturday. If we cannot touch the boy at his destination, then it must be done while he travels.’
    ‘We are at an advantage there, my Lord,’ said Yaxley, who seemed determined to receive some portion of approval. ‘We now have several people planted within the Department of Magical Transport. If Potter Apparates or uses the Floo Network, we shall know immediately.’
    ‘He will not do either,’ said Snape. ‘The Order is eschewing any form of transport that is controlled or regulated by the Ministry; they mistrust everything to do with the place.’
    ‘All the better,’ said Voldemort. ‘He will have to move in the open. Easier to take, by far.’
    Again, Voldemort looked up at the slowly revolving body as he went on, ‘I shall attend to the boy in person. There have been too many mistakes where Harry Potter is concerned. Some of them have been my own. That Potter lives is due more to my errors, than to his triumphs.’
    The company round the table watched Voldemort apprehensively, each of them, by his or her expression, afraid that they might be blamed for Harry Potter’s continued existence. Voldemort, however, seemed to be speaking more to himself than to any of them, still addressing the unconscious body above him.
    ‘I have been careless, and so have been thwarted by luck and chance, those wreckers of all but the best laid plans. But I know better now. I understand those things that I did not understand before. I must be the one to kill Harry Potter, and I shall be.’
    At these words, seemingly in response to them, a sudden wail sounded, a terrible, drawn-out cry of misery and pain. Many of those at the table looked downwards, startled, for the sound had seemed to issue from below their feet.
    ‘Wormtail,’ said Voldemort, with no change in his quiet, thoughtful tone, and without removing his eyes from the revolving body above, ‘have I not spoken to you about keeping our prisoner quiet?’
    ‘Yes m – my Lord,’ gasped a small man halfway down the table, who had been sitting so low in his chair that it had appeared, at first glance, to be unoccupied. Now he scrambled from his seat and scurried from the room, leaving nothing behind him but a curious gleam of silver.
    ‘As I was saying,’ continued Voldemort, looking again at the tense faces of his followers, ‘I understand better now. I shall need, for instance, to borrow a wand from one of you before I go to kill Potter.’
    The faces around him displayed nothing but shock; he might have announced that he wanted to borrow one of their arms.
    ‘No volunteers?’ said Voldemort. ‘Let’s see … Lucius, I see no reason for you to have a wand any more.’
    Lucius Malfoy looked up. His skin appeared yellowish and waxy in the firelight and his eyes were sunken and shadowed. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.
    ‘My Lord?’
    ‘Your wand, Lucius. I require your wand.’
    ‘I …’
    Malfoy glanced sideways at his wife. She was staring straight ahead, quite as pale as he was, her long, blonde hair hanging down her back, but beneath the table her slim fingers closed briefly on his wrist. At her touch, Malfoy put his hand into his robes, withdrew a wand and passed it