Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling

J.K. Rowling
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE
problems. We have much more important matters to discuss. Firstly — have
you managed the task I set you at the end of our previous lesson?”
“Ah,” said Harry, brought up short. What with Apparition lessons and
Quidditch and Ron being poisoned and getting his skull cracked and his
determination to find out what Draco Malfoy was up to, Harry had almost
forgotten about the memory Dumbledore had asked him to extract from
Professor Slughorn. “Well, I asked Professor Slughorn about it at the end
of Potions, sir, but, er, he wouldn’t give it to me.”
There was a little silence.
“I see,” said Dumbledore eventually, peering at Harry over the top of his
half-moon spectacles and giving Harry the usual sensation that he was being
X-rayed. “And you feel that you have exerted your very best efforts in this
matter, do you? That you have exercised all of your considerable ingenuity?
That you have left no depth of cunning unplumbed in your quest to retrieve
the memory?”
“Well,” Harry stalled, at a loss for what to say next. His single attempt to
get hold of the memory suddenly seemed embarrassingly feeble. “Well...
the day Ron swallowed love potion by mistake I took him to Professor
Slughorn. I thought maybe if I got Professor Slughorn in a good enough
mood —”
“And did that work?” asked Dumbledore. “Well, no, sir, because Ron got
poisoned —”
“— which, naturally, made you forget all about trying to retrieve the memory;
I would have expected nothing else, while your best friend was in
danger. Once it became clear that Mr. Weasley was going to make a full
recovery, however, I would have hoped that you returned to the task I set
you. I thought I made it clear to you how very important that memory is.
Indeed, I did my best to impress upon you that it is the most crucial memory
of all and that we will be wasting our time without it.”
A hot, prickly feeling of shame spread from the top of Harry’s head all
the way down his body. Dumbledore had not raised his voice, he did not
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