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

Then the handshake was broken; Dumbledore was at the door.
    ‘Goodbye, Tom. I shall see you at Hogwarts.’
    ‘I think that will do,’ said the white-haired Dumbledore at Harry’s side, and seconds later they were soaring weightlessly through darkness once more, before landing squarely in the present-day office.
    ‘Sit down,’ said Dumbledore, landing beside Harry.
    Harry obeyed, his mind still full of what he had 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 behaviour, 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