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

Dumbledore.’
    ‘Ooooh!’ gasped Hermione, looking up at once. ‘Good luck! We’ll wait up, we want to hear what he teaches you!’
    ‘Hope it goes OK,’ said Ron, and the pair of them watched Harry leave through the portrait hole.
    Harry proceeded through deserted corridors, though he had to step hastily behind a statue when Professor Trelawney appeared round a corner, muttering to herself as she shuffled a pack of dirty-looking playing cards, reading them as she walked.
    ‘Two of spades: conflict,’ she murmured, as she passed the place where Harry crouched, hidden. ‘Seven of spades: an ill omen. Ten of spades: violence. Knave of spades: a dark young man, possibly troubled, one who dislikes the questioner –’
    She stopped dead, right on the other side of Harry’s statue.
    ‘Well, that can’t be right,’ she said, annoyed, and Harry heard her reshuffling vigorously as she set off again, leaving nothing but a whiff of cooking sherry behind her. Harry waited until he was quite sure she had gone, then hurried off again until he reached the spot in the seventh-floor corridor where a single gargoyle stood against the wall.
    ‘Acid Pops,’ said Harry. The gargoyle leapt aside; the wall behind it slid apart, and a moving spiral stone staircase was revealed, on to which Harry stepped, so that he was carried in smooth circles up to the door with the brass knocker that led to Dumbledore’s office.
    Harry knocked.
    ‘Come in,’ said Dumbledore’s voice.
    ‘Good evening, sir,’ said Harry, walking into the Headmaster’s office.
    ‘Ah, good evening, Harry. Sit down,’ said Dumbledore, smiling. ‘I hope you’ve had an enjoyable first week back at school?’
    ‘Yes thanks, sir,’ said Harry.
    ‘You must have been busy, a detention under your belt already!’
    ‘Er …’ began Harry awkwardly, but Dumbledore did not look too stern.
    ‘I have arranged with Professor Snape that you will do your detention next Saturday instead.’
    ‘Right,’ said Harry, who had more pressing matters on his mind than Snape’s detention, and now looked around surreptitiously for some indication of what Dumbledore was planning to do with him that evening. The circular office looked just as it always did: the delicate silver instruments stood on spindle-legged tables, puffing smoke and whirring; portraits of previous headmasters and headmistresses dozed in their frames; and Dumbledore’s magnificent phoenix, Fawkes, stood on his perch behind the door, watching Harry with bright interest. It did not even look as though Dumbledore had cleared a space for duelling practice.
    ‘So, Harry,’ said Dumbledore, in a businesslike voice. ‘You have been wondering, I am sure, what I have planned for you during these – for want of a better word – lessons?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘Well, I have decided that it is time, now that you know what prompted Lord Voldemort to try and kill you fifteen years ago, for you to be given certain information.’
    There was a pause.
    ‘You said, at the end of last term, you were going to tell me everything,’ said Harry. It was hard to keep a note of accusation from his voice. ‘Sir,’ he added.
    ‘And so I did,’ said Dumbledore placidly. ‘I told you everything I know. From this point forth, we shall be leaving the firm foundation of fact and journeying together through the murky marshes of memory into thickets of wildest guesswork. From hereon in, Harry, I may be as woefully wrong as Humphrey Belcher, who believed the time was ripe for a cheese cauldron.’
    ‘But you think you’re right?’ said Harry.
    ‘Naturally I do, but as I have already proven to you, I make mistakes like the next man. In fact, being – forgive me – rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger.’
    ‘Sir,’ said Harry tentatively, ‘does what you’re going to tell me have anything to do with the prophecy? Will it help me … survive?’
    ‘It has a very great deal to do with the prophecy,’ said Dumbledore, as casually as if Harry had asked him about the next day’s weather, ‘and I certainly hope that it will help you to survive.’
    Dumbledore got to his feet and walked around the desk, past Harry, who turned eagerly in his seat to watch Dumbledore bending over the cabinet beside the door. When Dumbledore straightened up, he was holding a familiar shallow stone basin etched with odd markings around its rim. He placed the Pensieve on the desk in front of